Peace Delayed

The perennial question hanging over all talks in the Middle East is to decide whether they are a temporary sop to an intractable problem, or whether they herald major change. There are many reasons why the peace talks that Israel and Syria yesterday admitted they were holding could fail.

A corruption investigation is getting ever closer to the prime minister Ehud Olmert, who will be questioned by police tomorrow. The peace talks launched at Annapolis last year with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are close to deadlock. How curious, many say, that Mr Olmert has opened up another front with Syria, at the very time his domestic credibility is at its lowest and the main plank of his Palestinian policy is disintegrating. Even if this week's talks in Turkey get anywhere, would Mr Olmert have the moral authority to sell such a deal to a sceptical domestic audience? Those who support an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, the Syrian territory that Israel seized in the 1967 six day war, like Zahav Gal-on of the Meretz Party are skeptical about Mr Olmert's motives.

And yet the talks with Syria, like the Annapolis process itself, cannot be dismissed out of hand. First, a lot of the talking between Israel and Syria has already taken place at a level both discreet and deniable. A series of meetings took place in Europe between 2004 and 2006, which went a long way to sketching the outlines of a deal: Israel would withdraw to the lines of June 4 1967; a park would be established in the buffer zone; Israel would retain control over the use of the Jordan River and Lake Kinneret. Syria, in its turn, would end its support for Hizbullah and Hamas and break its strategic partnership with Iran.

Second, the officials involved in the talks in Turkey are not minor foreign ministry minions, but the prime minister's top advisers, Yoram Turbowitz, his chief of staff, and Shalom Turgeman, his foreign policy adviser. This could be a sign of the seriousness with which Israel treats the negotiations. There has also been a shift in the US position, which was once strongly opposed to the negotiations but now states it does not want to stand in their way.

On the other hand, the distance still to be traveled is great. As things stand, there is no sign that Syria is ready for a major realignment of its strategic partnership with Hizbullah, Hamas and Iran. And there is little prospect of any Israeli prime minister, let alone one as devalued as Mr Olmert, returning the Golan without such a realignment. As things stand, Israel's allergic reaction to Jimmy Carter's recent meeting with the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus was more representative of what its leaders really think. Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, called the US president who got Israel a lasting peace deal with Egypt and was trying to broker a ceasefire with Hamas "a bigot".

Israeli diplomats often say they prefer bilateral deals with their neighbors to the comprehensive approach of the Saudi-backed Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. The peace deals Israel reached with Jordan and Egypt have held whereas a comprehensive peace deal, although still on the table, is elusive. And yet no peace deal can be struck with Syria which does not include a new approach to Hizbullah and Hamas. On Wednesday, rival Lebanese factions reached a deal in Qatar, that gave the Hizbullah-led opposition the power of veto in a new national government. Lebanon's worst internal fighting since its 15-year civil war temporarily ceded large chunks of territory to Hizbullah. But the sectarian nature of the fighting scared Hizbullah's allies. Like Hamas's seizure of Gaza, Hizbullah's takeover of West Beirut had politically mixed consequences. No similar realization of the limits of military action can yet take place between either militant group and Israel, and yet that is how peace will come.