It might be the season, but there is a distinct chill in the air in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. That quiet town a few hours from Washington is the site for the newly resumed peace talks between Israel and Syria. Unfortunately, the bucolic setting has not yet worked its magic on the negotiators. The decades of mistrust are taking a toll; no issue has proven too small to fight over. While both sides say they want peace, neither government is making the gestures that prove it.
That there are talks at all is a victory of sorts. Syria has been Israel's most determined foe. It took six months of patient coaxing by the United States -- which began in earnest with the election of Mr. Ehud Barak as Israel's prime minister -- to get Damascus to resume talks that had been stalled for three years. Yet when the two sides met at the White House late last year to announce that negotiations would begin again, there was none of the informality or good will that had marked similar breakthroughs in the past. Pointedly, there was no handshake between the two principles, Mr. Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara. The chill has not dissipated.
The lack of trust is striking. The Syrians demanded that a U.S. representative attend all sessions in Washington to ensure that there was an independent record of what was said. Reportedly, the first meetings in Shepherdstown have been chiefly concerned with trying to establish where the previous round of talks had broken off. Syria claims that Israel promised during the last round to negotiate the handover of the Golan Heights and wants to proceed from there. Israel says no such concession was made.