http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130273TIME: Netanyahu Offering Partial Golan Withdrawal
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com) Aides to Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu are suggesting a partial withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria, TIME reported on Thursday. The magazine added that the proposal would likely be met with “derision” by the Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has demanded sovereignty over the entire strategic and water-rich area.
A basis of the recent Likud election campaign, guided by party chairman Netanyahu, was that Israel would not withdraw from the Golan Heights region, which was restored to the country in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, head of the powerful U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently spoke with Assad during a visit to Damascus and is actively campaigning for a thaw in relations with Syria. Evidence of a dramatic change in American policy was given by U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said in Jerusalem this week that two officials from the State Department and the White House, both of whom happen to be Jews, soon will visit Damascus.
In a speech at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institute, he said that the Obama administration is prepared to give Syria financial incentives in order to facilitate a peace treaty with Israel, which Assad told him is dependent on an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
"There is a window of opportunity that we must seize by showing, with actions more than words, that it will not just be business as usual in the Middle East," Senator Kerry said in his speech following his return to Washington from the Middle East.
He is promoting the strategy that offering to meet Assad’s demands will help convince him to break off from ties with Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas. "Loosening certain sanctions in return for verifiable changes in behavior could actually benefit U.S. businesses, and the sanctions can always be tightened again if Syria backtracks," the senator argued.
He admitted, however, that no one can expect “that Syria will immediately end its ties with Iran.”
Senator Kerry also gave notice that the Obama administration is “serious about Israel freezing settlement activity” in Judea and Samaria. He criticized previous American government opposition to a Jewish presence in the area as having "existed on paper alone."
The senator already has shown his influence in the area after a visit last month to Gaza and reportedly has pressured Israel to widen the list of products on humanitarian aid for Gaza, focusing on the omission of pasta, which is currently listed among the approved products for shipment to the region.
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