New negotiations belie 'appeasement' talk

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff

A week ago, President Bush gave a speech in Israel criticizing those who advocate negotiating "with the terrorists and radicals," saying that Jews and Americans learned during World War II of the dangers of "appeasing" rather than confronting such villains.

The speech was widely interpreted as a swat at the foreign policy philosophy of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, who has said that he would sit down and talk with US foes without preconditions. Republican rival John McCain has called Obama's views naive and inexperienced.

But in the six days since Bush delivered his speech, negotiations with such radicals and terrorists have become the order of the day.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced today that he has restarted peace negotiations with Syria -- a key backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, two militant groups that the United States considers terrorist organizations -- for the first time in eight years.

Noting that Israel's security has not improved during the frozen negotiations with Syria, Olmert said, "in such a situation, it is always better to talk than to shoot."

Israeli officials also began negotiating a cease-fire with Hamas. And today Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice herself welcomed a new power-sharing deal in Lebanon that gives Hezbollah effective veto power over key decisions in Lebanon's cabinet.

Tamara Wittes, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said the new attempts to forge agreements with Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria have come about because countries in the region feel the US strategy of isolating these adversaries has failed.

"Our allies in the region are looking out for the own interests because the American strategy, the Bush strategy, is not helping them," Wittes said. "Isolating Syria didn't change Syrian behavior. Isolating Hamas has not changed Hamas behavior. Trying to isolate Hezbollah has not weakened it. . .One can argue they have been strengthened by it."

Today, US officials were lukewarm about the announcement of Israeli peace talks with Syrians, a move that they have discouraged Israel from undertaking for years.

But White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that perhaps the talks would produce results rather than policies of appeasement -- reasoning that sounded an awful lot like Obama's.

Asked to explain why it's not appeasement for the Israelis to talk to the Syrians, Perino replied: "I think you need to go back and look at what the Israelis said and what I have just said, which is that we would hope...that these talks would result in Syria ending its sponsorship of terrorism. We don't know where this will go. We'll have to see how it progresses."