The Peace Process, Phase One: Past Accomplishments, Future Concerns

by Stephen C. Pelletiere

This report grew out of a conference on the Mideast Peace Process that the Strategic Studies Institute held with North Georgia College at the latter's Dahlonega, Georgia, campus in March 1996. At the time of the conference, Israel's Prime Minister Itzak Rabin had already been assassinated, and his successor, Shimon Peres, had called for new elections. Almost all of the participants at the conference felt confident there would be a peace settlement before October 1996. This was a confidence built on the widely held conviction that, with so many powerful players calling for peace, it must come. Instead, the Israeli referendum on peace--as Peres dubbed the elections- turned out to be a victory for Israel's Likud Party, whose leader, Benyamin Netanyahu, had repudiated many of the provisions of the agreements reached to that time. It is not known what course the peace process will take or even if it will continue. There is a danger, despite the best efforts of the United States and the resumption of IsraeliPalestinian talks, that we will see a period marked by political stalemate, likely accompanied by increasing violence. The three essays which follow, however, take stock of several key aspects of what can now be considered the first phase of the Mideast Peace Process (i.e., that period from the 1991 Madrid Conference to the 1996 Israeli election). In the first essay, Alfred B. Prados examines the Jordanian- Israeli peace agreement, which vies with the Israeli-Palestinian accords as the most positive development of the first phase. Prados outlines the history and terms of this landmark agreement. His concluding observations about the risks King Hussein has taken are even more salient in today's context. Next, Lieutenant Colonel Stephen H. Gotowicki assesses in detail the issue of deploying U.S. troops on the Golan Heights. Recent Israeli and Syrian statements seem to have doomed any near term Golan arrangement (and hence an Israeli-Syrian settlement). However, should the peace process with Syria suddenly resume, expectations of the United States could be even greater, and a U.S. Army peacekeeping mission would become the topic of intense debate in Washington. Finally, Dr. Stephen C. Pelletiere's study of Operation GRAPES OF WRATH looks at possible Israeli and Syrian motives underlying the violent exchanges in April 1996 in southern Lebanon. His analysis does not augur well for what lies ahead on the peace front. U.S. policymakers must move quickly to exploit-- or at least to try to control--developments in the Syria-Lebanon tangle of relations. These three essays, then, illuminate different pieces-- Jordan, the Golan, Lebanon--of the large tapestry of a peace process whose final dimensions are not clear, or, for that matter, certain of completion. What is clear are the high stakes for U.S. diplomacy and national security interests attendant on the outcome.

84 pages, Paperback

Published January 3, 1997