Syria: Golan on Gold Platter

Foreign Minister Walid Muallem sarcastically agreed with President Shimon Peres’s statement Monday that Israel will not hand over the strategic Golan Heights to Damascus on a “silver platter.” He responded Tuesday morning that “silver” was not good enough and demanded, "We want to receive the Golan on a gold platter.”

His comments have sent the prospects of a rapprochement with Syria further back in the deep freeze as Syria increasingly hardens its stand in tandem with overtures from the Obama administration to make it part of the peace process.

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent two senior officials to Damascus this year to sound out Syria, which officially is on the American “blacklist” of countries that support terror.

Muallem said the new American position is good but took the opportunity to throw all the blame on Israel for lack of progress. “There is an opportunity to achieve peace, but Israel is dragging it out too much. We must complete the indirect talks with Israel before we get to direct talks," he said the morning after President Peres met with visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar Assad revealed last year, in almost simultaneous statements, that the two countries have been carrying on indirect talks, mediated by Turkey, for more than a year.

Indirect negotiations stopped after Olmert’s government was shaken by a long string of criminal investigations against him and the resulting instability in his government. His successor, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has gone on record several times as saying that the Golan is not negotiable, but Olmert also made the same statement as recently as three years ago.  

Assad occasionally has said he was setting no pre-conditions for a peace accord with Israel but more often has stated that it is a foregone conclusion that Israel relinquish the water-rich area, where Jews comprise approximately 50 percent of the population of 40,000.