http://www.accessme.com/jordantimes/thu/news/news8.htm
Document shows Netanyahu was ready to return Golan
12/16/1999
TEL AVIV (AP) - In a document published on Wednesday by an Israeli
newspaper, former hard-line Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu agreed in
principle to give back the Golan Heights to Syria in return for a peace treaty.
The publication could undercut a campaign by the opposition Likud Party, once
led by Netanyahu, to rally Israeli public opinion against a withdrawal from the
Golan, occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.
Netanyahu did not deny the existence of the document, but said it was
misinterpreted and that he never agreed to hand back all of the Golan.
The document was delivered to Syrian President Hafez Assad in August 1998 by
American cosmetics tycoon and Netanyahu friend Ron Lauder, who was acting
as an emissary for the Israeli prime minister, the Yediot Ahronot daily said.
Article two of the Lauder document reads: "Israel will withdraw from the Syrian
lands taken in 1967, in accordance with Security Council resolutions 242 and 338
which established the right of all states to secure and recognised borders, and the
`land for peace' formula, to the commonly agreed border based on the
international line of 1923."
The document was published in Hebrew, but a Yediot reporter read the pertinent
passages to the Associated Press from the original English text.
The existence of the document was first revealed earlier this week when Israeli
Cabinet Minister Haim Ramon said in a speech to parliament that even
Netanyahu had agreed to far-reaching territorial concessions.
Ramon was trying to defuse charges by Likud that Prime Minister Ehud Barak
was surrendering to Syrian dictates and endangering Israel's security.
Barak, leader of the moderate Labour Party, has said the price for peace with
Syria would be painful, and it is widely assumed that he is ready to hand over
most, if not all of the plateau, in exchange for peace with Syria and security
guarantees.
Barak has said it would take a magnifying glass to show the difference between
what Netanyahu and Labour prime ministers were prepared to give up and that
he was not sure which would turn out to be more far-reaching.
Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the 1923 line is not the pre-1967 war frontier to
which Syria demands that Israel withdraw. The 1923 line, which was fixed in an
agreement between Britain and France when they ruled Syria and Palestine
after World War I, lies a few miles to the east of the 1967 frontier.
Netanyahu said he insisted in indirect contacts with the Syrians that Israel retain
control of the headwaters of the Jordan River which are on the lower slopes of
the Golan.
Likud leader Ariel Sharon said he learned of the Lauder missions to Syria in the
fall of 1998, just before he was named foreign minister by Netanyahu.
"I expressed my view. The trips to Damascus were stopped," Sharon told Israel
Radio on Tuesday.
Sharon said he never saw the Lauder document and that in any event, he felt it
was irrelevant for today's debate.
"I think we need to discuss what is happening now, not what another leader
thought or proposed in the past," he said.
