January 5, 2000
Web posted at: 5:25 p.m. EST (2225 GMT)

In this story: More West Bank land goes to Palestinians Israel calls on Syria to end alliance with Iran RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

SHEPHERDSTOWN, West Virginia (CNN) -- Behind closed doors in a remote West Virginia town, Israel and Syria continued on Wednesday to attempt to end a half-century of mistrust.

Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin said that the talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa are the first time Israel and Syria have addressed the most sensitive issues that stand between them.

"What is really important in my view is that we are closer than any time in history to peace between Israel and Syria, and consequently with Lebanon," Beilin, an architect of Israel's breakthrough peace accords with the Palestinians, told Israel army radio.

Water and border issues were on the agenda for the talks being held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, a town along the Potomac River about 70 miles from Washington.

Details from the discussions were not immediately disclosed. A huge stumbling block to peace is the issue of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war.

More West Bank land goes to Palestinians

There was also movement toward peace between Israel and another adversary -- the Palestinians. Coinciding with the talks in West Virginia, Israel on Wednesday began a long-delayed handover of another 5 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian rule.

"All the best. May God help you," an Israeli officer at the Yosef Camp army base near the northern town of Nablus told Palestinians as his troops moved out, flashing peace signs and sporting smiles, and the Palestinians moved in.

The Israeli Star of David flag was lowered and replaced by the Palestinian flag in driving rain to seal the transfer.

Three more army camps near the northern town of Jenin, one of them used until 1993 to shelter Palestinian collaborators with the Israeli occupation, also changed hands.

"We are happy to get our land back. I think in this handover we have achieved some territorial continuity," Palestinian official Bassem Esbeihat told reporters at Fahmeh camp south of Jenin. More land was due to be transferred Thursday.

The handover was mandated by a September interim peace deal and was scheduled to take place on November 15. But the pullback was delayed by a dispute between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators over what areas should be exchanged.

They finally broke the deadlock Tuesday. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the two sides had agreed on a transfer of 5 percent of the West Bank now and another 6.1 percent on January 20.

"What can be taken into account in the future is the Palestinian demand for the (next) further redeployment," Beilin told Reuters. "I presume that was the basis for the Palestinian-Israeli agreement."

With the January 20 handover, Palestinians will be in full or partial control of 40 percent of the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians want all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, most of which they control, for a future independent state.

Israel calls on Syria to end alliance with Iran

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, who is close to Barak, told Israel radio that peace with Syria will hinge, in part, on Syria ending its alliance with Iran and making sure that Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon are disarmed.

"If someone seriously desires peace with us, he will have to break off alliances with people who to this day talk about destruction of Israel," Sneh said, referring to a speech on Friday in which Iranian ruler Ali Khamenei called for the "annihilation" of Israel.

Sneh did not say whether Barak had raised these demands at this week's peace talks.

Syria and Iran are allies because of their common hostility toward Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Syria allows Iran to send arms and instructors through Syrian territory to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Syria has more than 30,000 troops in Lebanon and is the dominant power there. Hezbollah is fighting to oust the Israeli army from a strip of south Lebanese land that it occupies to protect Israel's northern border from guerrilla attacks.

Sneh called Hezbollah "the organization with the most anti- Israel ideology which has ever existed in the world."

Israeli leaders believe Syria has used the Hezbollah guerrillas as a means of putting pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

Correspondent Andrea Koppel, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.