Israel, Syria make history with peace talks on Golan Heights

ELI ADN, Golan Heights -- Uri Hetz has a lot invested in Israel's decades-old presence here in the Golan Heights. He and his partners have invested millions of dollars in Chateau Golan, an up-and-coming winery with acres of vineyards that stretch right up to the barbed-wire fence that marks the current border with Syria.

In six years of commercial production, Chateau Golan has emerged from nowhere to win accolades from critics as one of the finest wineries in the region, producing 13 varieties of grapes and 70,000 bottles a year as part of an exploding wine industry across the disputed Golan Heights.

Suddenly, though, Chateau Golan's future is in some doubt. After years of cold silence and indirect hostilities, fresh peace talks between Israel and Syria have been rapidly and unexpectedly making progress in recent weeks. Which means the future of this scenic plateau -- where lush vineyards mingle with minefields and abandoned Syrian villages -- could be back on the negotiating table for the first time since the previous round of Israeli-Syrian talks collapsed in 2000.

Progress until now has been hard to measure, though a continuing series of indirect talks in Istanbul, where Turkish mediators have been shuttling back and forth between Israeli and Syrian delegations in separate hotels, suggests that something is happening.

The process got a push this week, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar Assad came face to face at a summit of Mediterranean nations in Paris. It was the first time an Israeli prime minister and a Syrian president were in the same room together, and a chance seating arrangement based on alphabetical order landed the two men in chairs directly across the table from each other.

Assad had earlier ruled out the idea of shaking hands, and in photographs appeared to be trying his best yesterday to avoid even eye contact with the Israeli leader. But in a television interview broadcast on Al-Jazeera, Assad said he was ready for "normal relations" with Israel after a peace agreement.

Potentially eliminating one source of friction, Syria also announced yesterday that it would establish full diplomatic relations with Lebanon, a country Syria dominated by force in the past, helping to turn it into a frequent battleground for proxy fights between Tel Aviv and Damascus.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials say Olmert passed Assad a message through the Turkish delegation suggesting that it was time for the two men to meet and begin direct negotiations. It all indicates that the two sides might be serious this time about ending the state of warfare they've been in since the 60-year history of the Jewish state.

Both Assad and Olmert know the basic price they'd have to pay to achieve a peace deal. Syria would have to forsake its friendship with the mullahs of Iran and cut its support to anti-Israel groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel, for its part, would have to withdraw from this scenic plateau it seized 41 years ago during the Six-Day War.

Hetz, for one, says that's a trade he'd be willing to make. "If it's a good deal, I'm for it. If we return the Golan Heights to Syria and get eternal peace from them, I'm for it," the slim 39-year-old said as he led visitors through a cool underground cellar stuffed with casks of full-bodied merlots and fruity syrahs. "I'm not emotional about these things, I'm rational. This is about the future of the state of Israel. I can make wine and be the best winemaker I can be somewhere else as well."

Hetz's detached practicality is rare here, however. More common among the region's 20,000 Israeli residents is a defiant refusal to consider the possibility of leaving Golan, which Israel effectively annexed in 1981, a move that has never been recognized by the United Nations. Their intransigence is motivated in equal parts by a deeply held suspicion of Syria's intentions and a belief that the Golan Heights are part of the biblical land of Israel, given by God to the Jews.

"This area is not for sale, not for negotiation," said Marla Van Meter, spokeswoman for the Golan Residents' Committee, a citizens group that helped mobilize public opinion against previous peace talks with Syria in 1991 and 2000. "People have been living on the Golan for 40 years. There are three generations living on the Golan. Our children are having children who live here. We're doing a very good job, thank you very much, of living our lives with this political wrecking ball over our heads."

E-mail Mark MacKinnon at mmackinnon(at)globeandmail.com;

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)