The apparent readiness of President Hafez Assad of Syria to trade peace for territory was recently echoed by two Israeli leaders, Lieut. -Gen. Dan Shomron, who has just retired as the IDF's chief of the general staff, and Health Minister Ehud Olmert. The question is: How can Israel's security and Syria's sovereignty over the Golan Heights be reconciled to satisfy the skeptics in both camps?

President Bush's decision to use force to reverse Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and his reliance on the United Nations resolutions to carry out that mandate have introduced a new balance of power in the Middle East and stimulated the emergence of new alliances. Middle East regional security and a future solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict will be dramatically affected by these developments.

The U.S.-Israel relationship is likely to get much worse before it gets any better. Both the Bush administration and the Shamir government, it seems, have added to the present erosion – only together could they prevent further damage from seriously undermining both the prospects for peace and their long alliance.

There are two words for peace in Arabic, "Salam," meaning a state of non-belligerency is currently preferred by Arabs over "Sulh", which suggests reconciliation – the kind of peace sought by Israelis. The difference between the two words is not mere semantics, it reflects the nature of the different objectives brought to the peace conference by Arabs and Israelis.

Zionism, as a political movement, was the catalyst behind the creation of the state of Israel. Zionism now must help insure the survival of that state. The land of Israel and the Jews' return to that land sustained Zionism, shaping its political agenda and its subsequent implementation. The Israeli-Palestinian crisis over the right to the West Bank and Gaza has so dangerously deteriorated that it now could explode into a full-scale civil war. Israeli leaders currently are asking the same question that faced Zionist elders when the United Nations offered its partition plan in 1947: Should Israel settle for less than the biblical promise? Should the Jews forgo the grand design of Israel for the sake of peace? The Arab nations flatly rejected the partition plan, which provided for a Jewish and a Palestinian state, and invaded Israel in 1948. As a result of the war, Israel expanded its landholdings and maintained them until 1967.

By focusing primarily on Israel and the Palestinians in its strategy for peace in the Middle East, the Bush administration is ignoring a third essential player – Syria. Secretary of State James Baker's call on Israel to "lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of greater Israel and forswear annexation," and his equally blunt call to the Palestinians "to speak in one voice … and amend the Palestinian Liberation Organization covenant and resort to a dialogue of politics and diplomacy" was certainly courageous, balanced, and overdue. Peace will not be achieved, however, without Syria's ultimate cooperation. Syrian President Hafez Assad's self-imposed mission to shape the Arab agenda on the Palestinian and Lebanese issues has often strained his relationships with his fellow Arab leaders and further complicated the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

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The avowal of human rights as a political, religious, and moral philosophy, and as an ideal that governs the relationship between groups and individuals, has had a long and mixed history.

While Israel has never been more secure internationally, its existence now is threatened by one of the legacies of its victories: the Palestinian people.