Israel and Syria announced Wednesday that they had resumed peace talks through Turkish mediators, ending an eight-year freeze, with Damascus saying it had a prior Israeli undertaking to return the whole of the occupied Golan Heights. “Israel and Syria began indirect peace talks under Turkish auspices,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said: “Indirect talks began in Turkey with Turkish mediation in a bid to pave the ground for the resumption of direct negotiations aimed at achieving just and comprehensive peace in the region.” The Turkish foreign ministry said the three sides had decided to go public on the talks simultaneously. Syria and Israel “have declared that they will continue these negotiations with good will and open minds,” it said. Muallem said that Damascus “received commitments for a withdrawal from the Golan to the June 4, 1967 line” – right down to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main water source. But a senior Israeli official insisted there had been no change to the government's policy that while accepting the principle of a withdrawal from the Golan as part of a peace deal, the depth of any pullout would depend on agreement on other issues. “We know what the Syrians expect from this process and the Syrians know what we expect from this process,” Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said. Two top advisors of the prime minister – Shalom Turgeman and Yoram Turbowitz – were in Ankara Wednesday for talks with Turkish diplomats, senior Israeli officials said. Announcing the start of the peace negotiations, Olmert's office said Syria and Israel “declared their intention to conduct these talks frankly and openly. “They decided to conduct the dialogue in a serious and continuous manner in a bid to reach a comprehensive peace,” the statement said. The last round of peace talks between Syria and Israel broke down in 2000 over the fate of the Golan, which the Jewish state seized in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981 in a move never recognized by the international community. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad revealed last month that Turkey had passed on a message from Israel expressing its readiness to swap the Golan Heights for peace.
