Today's Situation

SUCCESS AND SYRIA, August 2, 2007

Having recorded success in the first part of her Middle East mission - garnering the support of moderate Arab states, primarily Saudi Arabia, for President Bush's planned regional conference in the fall -U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza turned her attention to the thornier matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Wednesday, Rice met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. According to Maariv, the secretary of state said she was encouraged by the attitude of regional parties to the U.S. initiative for a Middle East peace conference. On Thursday, she is due in Ramallah for a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Haaretz's lead story reports that Olmert is seeking to finalize the outline of an agreement in principle with the Palestinians even before the regional conference. It seems that he sent one of his closest political allies, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, with a message in this spirit to Rice on Thursday morning. Israel Radio says that Ramon told Rice that the final borders of a new Arab state can be defined before the fall conference. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has publicly stated that it is too soon to talk about the final stages of the two-state solution. However, Ramon is a close confidant of the prime minister and frequently sends out trial balloons for the government.

There will, it seems, be serious opposition to the conference from Hamas. One senior Hamas official dismisses the planned conference as a publicity stunt. Speaking in Damascus, Moussa Abu Marzouk told The Associated Press that the United States is mistaken if it believes peace will come from a conference that excludes Hamas. In Haaretz, meanwhile, a senior adviser to former prime minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh Wednesday Ahmed Yusef said that Israel and the PA will never succeed in implementing a permanent political agreement, unless Hamas decides to approve it. Yusef went on to say that the negotiations between the U.S. and Abbas hinged on future negotiations between Hamas and Fateh.

Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, meanwhile, told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Hamas' military takeover has not changed his opinion and that he still favors talking with Hamas. He added that Israel should include the organization in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. "I don't say we should talk to Hamas out of sympathy to them," he said. "I have no sympathy whatsoever for Hamas. I think they are a ghastly crowd. But I have not seen anybody who says the Abbas-Fayyad tandem is going to do the job."

In its lead story, meanwhile, Yedioth Ahronoth reports on a secret message relayed from Damascus to Jerusalem, in which the Syrians warned the Israeli government that should it continue to reject President Bashar Assad's peace overtures, a war of attrition may break out in the Golan Heights.

According to the paper, Israel has received reports of increased Syrian presence on its side of the Golan Heights in preparation for a possible war.

Finally, Maariv leads with a report that suggests that the Winograd Committee, which is examining the events that led up to the Second Lebanon War and the mishandling of that conflict by the government and army, is in danger of being disbanded. According to the report, the High Court petition filed by the Military Advocate General against the committee, demanding that any member of the military who could be harmed by the committee's finding receive a written warning to that effect before the final report is published, could lead to a further in the report's publication.

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