Israel-Syria peace talks begin in Washington. They are the highest-level negotiations ever conducted by the two nations. Experts discuss the possibilities.

RAY SUAREZ: The talks continue tomorrow. If a settlement is reached, it will have to be approved by the Israeli parliament and by Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad. For more on the Israeli-Syrian peace process we get two views. Joel Singer has served on Israeli delegations negotiating with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinians and with Syria. He is now in private law practice. Hisham Melhem is the Washington-based correspondent for the Lebanese daily newspaper As-Safir.

And Hisham, so much of the emphasis of the coverage has been on the Golan and Israel giving something up for peace. What do the Syrians have to give?

HISHAM MELHEM: Well, they will give stabilization with Israel. They are the most formidable foe now for the Israelis. With the peace between Syria and Israel and peace between Israel and Lebanon, you will finish the circle of peace, if you will, around historic Palestine and now Israel. And you will have a situation in which, if the Arab-Israeli conflict, the conventional conflict that we have known for more than 50 years, will be over, and there will be a different political map, if you will, in the region. There will be different dynamics in the region, political, economic and even cultural.

And I think the Syrian foreign minister today alluded to these things. He talked about for the first time about ending the barriers of fear, he talked about the psychological fear, and the anxieties on the Israeli part, he recognized those. He talked about peace not only among states but peace among people. And he talked about ending the state of war and reaching a point of peace where we would have, in his own words, "honorable competition in the domains of economics, science and culture and what not."

RAY SUAREZ: But why is there more pressure on Syria, given the fact that it's lost its superpower patron, the Soviet Union, all the other states have made some kind of peace with Israel, either a chilly one or a warm one -- why is it so heavily still emphasizing Israel's need to do something to get things going?

HISHAM MELHEM: Well, I mean everybody knew all along the broad outlines and the contours of peace, that the Israelis cannot have both, peace with Syria and the Golan. Either they would maintain the Golan and maintain the state of belligerency, or they will give up the Golan, which is not theirs. It was taken by force in 1967, in return for peaceful relationship. The Syrians have this simple formula, total withdrawal for total peace.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, let's go to you, Joel Singer. You've negotiated with many of these parties. Tell us what's different about the situation that exists between the Syrians and the Israelis, compared with the other countries with which Israel has made peace.

JOEL SINGER: Well, one difference is that there is no peace yet between Israel and Syria and that Syria has, for many, many years preferred to be the last country to make peace with Israel, rather than the first country. As early as 1973, just after the Yom Kippur War, when the Geneva Peace Conference was convened, Egypt joined, Jordan joined, Syria refused to join. And ever since, there were delays and even when the negotiations restarted in Madrid, they were for many, many years put on the back burner. I think that now I see a change, a feeling of urgency on both sides, both the Israeli side and the Syrian side, which I think for the first time give a prospect that we will see soon a treaty of peace actually signed.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, you've said before that you don't put a lot of emphasis on these first day, public statements and some of the stage craft of putting them together, but you did find some of the things in today's statements significant, like no mention of borders?

JOEL SINGER: Yeah, I have read carefully the speech given by the Syrian foreign minister, and what I have found striking is the fact that he has not repeated this time the mantra that numerous Syrian leaders and negotiators have been repeating for quite a long time, the demand that Israel withdraws not just from the Golan Heights, but with an indication withdrawal to the June 4, 1967, lines, which was a very significant issue between the Israeli side and the Syrian side.

Remember, in the period between 1948 and 1967, Syria occupied parts of Israel and retained this occupation until 1967, when Israel conquered the Golan Heights. Syria was insisting for quite a long time that Israel withdraws not to the international boundary but to the June 4, 1967, boundary, meaning including parts of Israel. This time, this issue has disappeared from the public speech. It may mean that maybe the U.S. president asked the two sides to attempt not to bring up controversial issues in their public speeches, but it may also mean that somewhere, sometimes behind the scenes, the issue of the border between the two countries has been discussed and may have been resolved.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, it's a very strong issue, Hisham, what do you think it means?

HISHAM MELHEM: I wouldn't make that leap. I mean that's a big leap of faith. I wouldn't make that leap. I noticed, like everybody else, and we made that point in our analysis today, that the Syrian prime minister did not repeat that phrase, return to June 4, 1967, although he talked about withdrawal from all of the Golan. Now, Mr. Singer was talking about Syria occupying part of Israel before 1948. He's referring to demilitarized zones in which the Israelis laid claim, sovereignty to those, and the Syrians said these demilitarized zones, their status, legal status should be negotiated and decided later to on. From 1949 to 1967 the Israelis began to make encroachment on these demilitarized zones that led to Syrian shelling those areas, but I don't want to repeat the history. It's a long, complex one. It is somewhat significant if it means the Syrians is not going to go back to June 4. I doubt that very much.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, doesn't it have to do with water?

HISHAM MELHEM: Absolutely. The main issue here is territorial. The main issue is territorial. The Syrians have been saying publicly and privately for many years, "We want to return to the status quo of 1967 on the eve of the war, i.e., having access to the water of Lake Tiberius." And talk about the international borders of 1923. These borders were drawn by imperial powers, by the British in particular, in which the Syrians felt and the Syrians never recognized legally --

RAY SUAREZ: But those are the borders that operate in the entire region, the ones that Sikes and Pico drew up for Britain and France are the borders throughout the Middle East. Why not in this particular piece of territory?

HISHAM MELHEM: Look, I mean the British at that time said that we have to give all the Jewish homeland -- there was no Jewish homeland in 1923 -- there were a tiny Jewish minority in Palestine anyway. They gave them 10 meters above the shoreline in the north of Lake Tiberius, and the Syrians felt this was a great injustice to them. In other words, we can see the water, we can feel the water but we cannot taste the water. And they never accepted that.

I mean, this is not beyond resolution. This issue is not beyond a resolution. They could have access to the water and not necessarily have rights in the legal sense. I mean creative diplomacy can find a solution to this. If, as the Syrian foreign minister said, that if there is a will to settle this issue and this issue is a border dispute and not an existential, that to me is very significant because if you look at the Syrian political discourse over the years, they used to talk about the conflict with Israel, in a similar way to the way Israelis talked about the conflict with the Arabs, in existential terms. This was no longer the case, and that to me was very significant today.

RAY SUAREZ: And many Americans refer to the Lake Tiberius as the Sea of Galilee. Is this potentially a deal-breaker, Joel Singer?

JOEL SINGER: I think that the issue of border and water -- these are two issues but they are linked to one another. If this issue is resolved and if Israel receives the minimal requirements in terms of security, which is basically an ability of early warning to prevent a surprise attack against Israel that can destroy Israel, Israel is built on mobilizing its reserve units. It takes a few days to complete the mobilization. Syria can destroy Israel in a surprise attack, and Israel cannot relinquish the strategic Golan Heights unless it gets some sort of early warning. If this issue is resolved, if Syria undertakes to prevent attacks against Israel from Lebanon, once Israel withdraws from Lebanon, you have a done deal.

RAY SUAREZ: Hisham Melhem, we haven't talked about Lebanon, which I guess is also a piece in this regional puzzle.

HISHAM MELHEM: Absolutely. I mean, one reason why Barak is negotiating with the Syrians is because he wants to extricate the Israeli occupation forces from South Lebanon, where you have for the last few years a low intensity, a war of attrition against the Israelis. Definitely -- and given Syria's formidable influence in Lebanon, if you will, to put it mildly, he has to talk to Damascus if he wants to extract himself from Lebanon. The Lebanese will enter on the line so to speak in the next few weeks if there is some progress made here in Washington. And then I can see the two tracks, the Lebanese tracks and Syrian tracks moving in tandem. There are not too many outstanding issues between Lebanon and Israel. There is the international border, recognized border. The Israelis have to withdraw to the international border.

JOEL SINGER: It's the same border as between Israel and Syria, incidentally, the same line. It is recognized between Israel and Lebanon, but not --

HISHAM MELHEM: Exactly. And then -- but the one outstanding problem that I don't see any resolution to, and this could be a time bomb, which is the fate of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. These are refugees from the Galilee, from Northern Palestine and who were driven from their homes in the 1947-1948 war. So this is a very sticky, important issue for Lebanon, the future of the Palestinians there. But there are no outstanding strategic issues between Lebanon and Israel the way you have between Syria and Israel. And I agree, if the Syrians resolve the issue of access to the water and the early warning station, I don't expect the Syrians to expect Syrian soldiers or Syrian technicians to man any stations there.

RAY SUAREZ: Israeli.

HISHAM MELHEM: Israeli, exactly.

RAY SUAREZ: We're going to have to end it right there. Hisham, Joel, thanks a lot.