Yitzhak Rabin’s secret ‘pocket deposit’ proposal to Syria tied to Golan withdrawal

“It’s the opposite in this case,” I replied. “In a battle, the enemy is doing everything it can to stop you. When you break through, it’s against their resistance. Here, the other side will choose to make it easiest for us in the place it prefers. If Arafat thinks he’ll get more from the Bear and the Mouse than from the other talks, it’s hardly a surprise we’re finding that only Oslo seems to offer a way forward.” Rabin did make one more move, not so much in a bid to end the talks in Oslo as to slow them down and create a context more favorable for the kind of agreement he wanted. He shifted his attention to his original peacemaking priority: the Syrians. In an effort to remove a roadblock to even beginning serious talks, he offered the Americans what they would later call his “pocket deposit.” He authorized Secretary of State Warren Christopher to tell Assad that Washington’s understanding of our position was that, assuming all our own negotiating concerns were addressed, we accepted that peace with Syria would include withdrawing from the Golan. The formula was agreed in a meeting in Israel between Rabin and the Clinton Administration’s Middle East negotiator, Dennis Ross. Rabin didn’t tell Peres or other ministers about it, though Itamar Rabinovich did know. I did as well. Since acceptance of the need for a withdrawal had security implications, Rabin and I talked about it in detail before Ross’s visit. We formulated the “deposit” together. We used an English acronym: IAMNAM, “if all my needs are met.” The point was to convey to the Syrian president that if he addressed our requirements for a demilitarized zone and early warning facilities; non-interference with our critically important water sources; as well as a full peace including embassies, open borders and joint economic projects, we knew the trade-off would be to return the Golan. It was by diplomatic accident that the Syrian overture went nowhere. The reason even the Americans had called our proposal a “pocket deposit” was that it was to be kept in the Christopher’s pocket, to be pulled out as an American understanding of our position if he felt it might lead to a breakthrough. Our intelligence accounts of the Christopher-Assad talks, however, suggested it had been presented as a straight message from Rabin to the Syrian president, giving it the status of Israel’s new, formal opening position in negotiations. The distinction may seem minor. But for Israel, it mattered greatly. In any agreement with Syria — or, indeed, the Palestinians — there was bound to an imbalance. Both parts of a “land-for-peace” exchange were important. But land was not just the more tangible asset. Once given up, short of resorting to all-out war, there was no going back. The “peace” part of the equation was more 256 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028104