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Whether the stories were true wouldn’t matter. They would still make the real
bargaining necessary for peace far more difficult, perhaps even impossible.

I also had doubts whether Assad was ready for real peace: embassies, open
borders, personal contact between Syrians and Israelis, and ideally an
internationally backed free-trade manufacturing area on the Golan to give Syria a
tangible stake in ensuring the peace lasted. In earlier talks, under Shimon Peres,
Syrian negotiators had at one stage brought a message from Assad. What did we
mean, he wanted to know, with all this emphasis on peace, peace, peace? Syria had
peace with El Salvador, but without any of the trappings we were insisting on.
Peace, in Assad’s mind, seemed to mean merely an absence of war. Plus, of course,
getting back the Golan.

I did, however, come ready to negotiate. Though I was still not prepared to
reconfirm Rabin’s “pocket deposit” as a mere ticket of admission, my position
remained essentially the one I had worked out with Yitzhak in formulating the
deposit: IAMNAM, “if all my needs are met.” Meaning that if Assad showed a
readiness to deal with Israel’s requirements in a peace deal, I did, of course,
recognize we would leave the Golan Heights. In addition to early-warning
facilities, we envisaged an open border with a demilitarized area on either side, as
well as guarantees that important sources of water for Israel would not be blocked
or diverted. As Assad knew, despite his presumably feigned puzzlement about
Syria’s arrangements with El Salvador, we also needed the agreement to embody a
mutual commitment to real peace: through elements like an exchange of
ambassadors and the establishment of the free-trade zone. As with the Begin-Sadat
peace, we assumed that our Golan withdrawal would come in phases, parallel to
the implementation of the other provisions of the treaty.

In our initial meetings in Shepherdstown, Foreign Minister al-Sharaa showed no
inclination even to talk about these other issues. So on the second afternoon we
were there, I suggested to President Clinton the Americans try to break the logjam
by drafting a paper of their own. It would detail all the issues in an eventual
agreement, with parenthetical references to those on which we and the Syrians still
differed. Then each side could respond with a view toward narrowing the gaps.
The President liked the idea. So did Al-Sharaa. Three days later, the President
presented the eight-page American draft. With his customary eloquence, he
emphasized the need for us to use it as a springboard for peace, not to score
political points, and each side agreed to take a couple of days to look through it. It

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