TUESDAY'S PEACE conference in Annapolis, Md., may or may not lead to fruitful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and Syria may or may not attend that conference. No matter what happens, Syria and Israel ought to be negotiating with each other.
Indeed, peace between these two nations may be easier to forge than a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The issues are simpler to resolve than those at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. And despite his heavy-handed conduct in Lebanon and Iraq, Syrian President Bashar Assad is more able than Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to deliver on a peace deal.
Plus, the strategic benefits of a deal between Syria and Israel may be not only more immediate but also more far-reaching.
Through back channels, the two governments have recently explored the possibility of a Syrian-Israeli negotiating track. Israelis in the know have said these tentative soundings went nowhere because of the Bush administration's recalcitrance. At first, the response from Washington was that Assad's defiance of American dictates in Iraq and Lebanon disqualified Syria as a negotiating partner. Then, President Bush let it be known that Israel could explore a dialogue with Syria, but that it would have to be strictly a duet - without any contribution from the United States.
Predictably, Assad's response was that Syria had insufficient incentive to seek a peace accord with Israel alone. Assad, of course, needs to retrieve the Golan Heights, which Syria lost to Israel in the 1967 war. But as added compensation for a peace deal with Israel, he also wants the benefits of full acceptance by America.
For Israel, the United States, and those Arab regimes that seek to counter a perceived threat from Iran, Assad has a valuable card to offer: the option of subtracting Syria from an arc of Iranian influence that now stretches through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. It is hard to exaggerate the strategic benefits of such a reconfiguration of the regional balance of power.
This partly explains why Israel's intelligence agencies are recommending that Assad's hints of a willingness to talk peace - communicated through Turkish and Russian go-betweens - ought to be taken seriously. They think he wants peace and can deliver on any peace deal he strikes with Israel.
An American president with strategic vision would come to the same conclusion. An Israeli-Syrian peace might reduce the regional threat from Tehran. And, by reducing support for militant armed groups in Lebanon and among the Palestinians, it could also, eventually, make it easier to bring about a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
