Signals From Two Old Foes

Is it time, at long last, to be truly optimistic about progress in the Middle East peace talks? To be sure, no one is predicting a reprise of the Camp David negotiations, which led to 1979's historic pact between Israel and Egypt. Yet in words -- both spoken and left unsaid -- if not in deeds, Syria and Israel, those two most contentious of antagonists, appear to be sending each other tiny signals of encouragement.

Consider recent events in Lebanon, which is effectively under Syrian control. Earlier this month, the Israelis displayed relative restraint in responding to rocket assaults on its frontier communities by guerrillas of the militant Shi'ite group Hizballah. Syria eventually put a clamp on the attacks. Significantly, neither side broke away from the Middle East negotiations in Washington.

That Damascus and Jerusalem may be ready for some progress is perhaps no great surprise. The Syrians, unlike the internally quarrelsome Palestinian- Jordanian delegation, have an unchallenged leader in President Hafez Assad. His immediate goal is regaining the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967. This mountainous region of hardscrabble farms and fields has about 13,000 Israeli settlers, in contrast to 140,000 such settlers in the West Bank. Despite the Golan's symbolic significance to both sides, its importance to Israeli security in the age of the missile has diminished. Though risking loss of support at home, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has pledged to return part of the Golan in exchange for peace. Syria demands all the heights, but Assad has shown flexibility on other issues. Both sides admit that U.S. commitment and pressure are key to what happens next. For that reason, neither side wants to unsettle negotiations until more is learned about the intentions of the incoming Clinton Administration.

To determine what the principals are thinking, deputy managing editor John Stacks and Karsten Prager, managing editor of TIME International, joined Cairo bureau chief Dean Fischer, correspondent William Dowell and reporter Lara Marlowe for an interview with Assad at the presidential palace on a mountaintop overlooking Damascus. Later, Fischer, Dowell and reporter Robert Slater met with Rabin at his office in Jerusalem. Almost as important as what the two men said was the moderate, relatively rancor-free tone of their responses. That alone is progress.