JERUSALEM — Israel has told Syrian leaders it is willing to give up the captured Golan Heights as part of a peace deal that would require Syria to distance itself from Iran’s virulently anti-Israel regime, a newspaper reported.
Yediot Ahronot reported Friday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently sent messages to Syrian President Bashar Assad through German and Turkish diplomats saying Israel was open to direct peace negotiations and to give up the strategic plateau it seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
The paper said Syria had not responded to the overture, quoting unidentified officials close to Olmert.
Olmert’s office would not comment on the report. But an Israeli official said earlier in the week that Israel had been taking soundings on Syria’s intentions through an undisclosed third party. That official agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name.
Israel and Syria have held several rounds of peace talks in the past. The last attempt broke down in 2000 over the scope of a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, which Syrian artillery shelled Israelis before the 1967 war.
Assad has recently urged Israel to return to the negotiating table, but has not publicly addressed Israel’s demand that Damascus scale back its ties with Iran, its main ally in the region, and stop backing Lebanese and Palestinian groups committed to Israel’s destruction.
Yediot said US President George W. Bush gave Olmert the green light for negotiations with Syria in an hourlong phone conversation last month. The two leaders plan further discussions during their scheduled meeting at the White House on June 19, it said.
A US Embassy spokesman in Tel Aviv could not be reached Friday for comment on the newspaper report.
In the past, Israeli and US officials have said privately that Washington didn’t want Israel to talk with Syria, because of its ties to militants in Iraq and its meddling in Lebanon. But Bush is under pressure from allies, lawmakers and advisers who think Washington should improve relations with Syria in an effort to isolate Iran.
Syria backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon during their war with Israel last summer, while the political leadership of the Palestinian militant group Hamas is headquartered in Damascus.
After the Lebanon war, Assad offered to open negotiations with Olmert, but Israel dismissed his overture as a tactic to ease his regime’s isolation in the West. Last week, however, a senior Israeli official said Olmert was assessing prospects for new talks.
It is not clear what drove the turnaround.
The inconclusive Lebanon war made Olmert too politically weak at home to make headway with his proposed withdrawal from large swaths of the West Bank, and negotiations with Syria could help to dispel the widespread image in Israel that he has no political agenda.
Alternatively, Olmert might have reached the conclusion that Syria is serious about making peace or that Israel should not rebuff peace overtures.
Palestinian analysts have speculated Israeli is trying to undermine Syria’s support for Palestinian militants and to divert attention from stagnated Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Returning Golan, which Israel annexed in 1981, is not a popular idea in Israel. The heights dominate much of northern Israel, overlooking the country’s largest source of drinking water, and are home to wineries and popular tourism sites.
A poll by the Teleseker company published in the Maariv newspaper Friday said 84 percent of 500 Israelis surveyed oppose a full withdrawal from Golan and 44 percent opposed any pullback. The poll had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
