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Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem, in Cairo this week for an Arab League meeting, did an interview with Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and partially walked back his comments (عربي) about allowing Israel to return the Golan Heights in stages.

"This is not true. What we are interested in doing is recovering every inch of the Golan, up to the June 1967 borders, because this is Syrian land, and this is a matter of our national honor... any dialogue with the Israelis must begin with this objective -- the full return of the Golan, up to 1967 borders -- and the details will be discussed later."

I don't want to read too much into Moallem's wording, but that last part -- "the details will be discussed later" -- is carefully phrased. Moallem seems to leave the door open for the Israeli government to return the Golan in stages, as long as Israel commits up front to eventually returning the whole thing.

He seems to split the difference, in other words, between the historic Syrian position -- the full return of the Golan is a precondition for talks -- and his phased-return comments in December.

The Arab League -- meeting today in Cairo -- voted to endorse "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. American mediators, presumably led by George Mitchell, will shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Benjamin Netanyahu wants everyone in his cabinet to shut up about Syria.

Ehud Barak started this week's escalating Israeli-Syrian spat when he made the wholly sensible argument that the two countries could be headed for another war if they don't resume peace talks.

The Middle East foreign policy community in DC spent the morning focused on a New America Foundation poll of Israelis, which found a surprising level of Israeli support for Barack Obama.

The results are encouraging, but it's worth stepping back and remembering that Obama's personal popularity doesn't mean much for the prospects of the "peace process." Two recent stories illustrate that we're unlikely to see any short-term progress towards regional reconciliation.

The first is a swirl of controversy around reports that the Egyptian government, with help from the United States, is building a giant underground wall to stop smuggling into Gaza.

Has the Syrian government suddenly reversed decades of standing policy and dropped its demand that Israel agree to return the Golan Heights as a precondition for peace talks? Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks so.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and French president Nicolas Sarkozy had their much-anticipated meeting in Paris this afternoon. The two men had a nearly two-hour meeting; Sarkozy reportedly gave Assad a letter from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu offering peace talks without preconditions.

Assad told reporters after the meeting that a face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu was out of the question, because he didn't think Israel was seriously willing to talk about peace.

A couple of hours ago I hinted that Israel might shift its focus to Israeli-Syrian diplomacy (rather than Israeli-Palestinian). Apparently someone in the Palestinian Authority agrees with me, according to Yedioth Ahronoth:

Despite Israel's denial that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a secret message of reconciliation to Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Palestinian Authority is convinced that something has changed in the Israeli approach, and that Jerusalem is now planning to focus its efforts on renewing talks with Damascus.

Al-Jazeera's Alan Fisher is in Paris ahead of tomorrow's Sarkozy-Assad meeting, and he's tweeting about "growing confidence" that Assad and Netanyahu will agree to "fresh talks... with the Golan on the agenda." I'm still skeptical! We'll find out in the morning.

I sort of informally decided this summer to stop writing about the Israeli-Syrian "peace process." Every few weeks, one side would announce its interest in resuming negotiations. But Assad would insist on talking about the Golan Heights, and Netanyahu would insist on talks without preconditions, and nothing ever happened.

It's with that slightly jaundiced eye that I read this report from Al-Arabiya (عربي) claiming that Netanyahu offered to return the Golan Heights. He was in France yesterday, meeting with French president Nicolas Sarkozy; Assad is scheduled to meet with Sarkozy tomorrow. And Netanyahu asked Sarkozy to convey a message, according to al-Arabiya -- rough translation follows after the jump.

A few odds and ends about Israel and the Goldstone Report. The U.S. House of Representatives is due to vote later today on a resolution condemning the report. (We did some fact-checking of the resolution last week, in case you missed it.)

The U.N. General Assembly is scheduled to take up the report tomorrow; Arab states are floating a proposal that would also require the Security Council to consider the report. The draft would call on Israel and Hamas to conduct investigations "that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards," according to AFP.

Bashar al-Assad's regime will ban Facebook in Syria, and campaign for a boycott of the service, because of this perceived slight:

... the social networking site permits Israelis living on the Golan Heights to list "Israel" as their country of residence, according to a report in Tuesday's Arab language newspaper Al Quds al Arabi.

I guess both sides have a point: The Golan is internationally recognized as Syrian territory occupied by Israel; but Israelis living in the Golan are, indeed, living in territory administered by the Israeli government.

Remember those optimistic reports, shortly after Netanyahu's speech at Bar-Ilan University, about possible peace talks between Syria and Israel?

Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, said yesterday that any talks between Israel and Syria must be direct, instead of through Turkish intermediaries. He said previous Turkish-mediated talks failed -- because of "Syrian intransigence," of course, meaning Syria's insistence that Israel obey U.N. resolution 242 and return the Golan Heights.

"We have enormous respect for the Turkish efforts, but they have not succeeded," Ayalon said, in a Reuters interview. "Not because of the Turks, but because of the Syrians. Past experience shows that other negotiators or mediators, like the US or France, did not succeed because of Syrian intransigence."

You know where this is going: Syrian officials said today that any talks must be... mediated by Turkey.

Yossi Beiditz, the IDF's senior intelligence official, testified before a Knesset committee today. I think his analysis of Syria's foreign policy gets it largely right.

"In the estimate of the IDF Intelligence Branch, should Syria encounter a dilemma in the [region] after a deal with Israel, it will be willing to cool off its ties with Iran, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian groups," he said.

Bashar al-Assad is playing both sides right now, using his ongoing relationship with Iran to win concessions from the West and from other Arab states. But that state of affairs can't continue indefinitely; a regional conflict would force Assad to choose sides. And with Iran going through political unrest and economic turmoil, Assad would probably choose the West.

First post of August, and we start the morning with a couple of notable speeches from the Levant.

The return of the Golan Heights is non-negotiable, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said today in a speech marking Syria's Army Day. Syria says it is willing to resume talks with Israel, with Turkey as an intermediary, if they focus on a return of the Golan -- which the Israeli government is unwilling to discuss.

The Arab world is losing patience with Obama, a prominent Lebanese Shi'a cleric said yesterday. Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah charged the U.S. with slipping back towards the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East.

Fadlallah, in an April interview, said he believed Obama was "sincere" about improving relations with the Muslim world.

Israel wants Turkey to resume its role as a mediator between Israel and Syria, according to a Qatari newspaper report. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Syria yesterday and reportedly told Syrian president Bashar al-Assad about the request.

Turkey has indicated that it is willing to mediate, though it's unclear if the two sides will actually resume talks; the Golan Heights remains a seemingly impassable issue.

I'm getting a little bored of stories about Israeli/Syrian diplomacy. The narrative is always the same: A top Western diplomat meets with Syrian officials, who say they're willing to negotiate a peace deal in exchange for the Golan Heights. Then, a few days later, our intrepid Western diplomat meets with Israeli officials, who say they're also willing to talk, as long as they don't have to talk about the Golan. Pause for one week; repeat.

I've said it before but, hey, I'll say it again: The Golan is the only issue that matters here. If Israel is not willing to talk about returning it -- something it is required to do under international law, by the way -- then all of this "shuttle diplomacy" is totally meaningless.

A banner week for the Netanyahu administration, really. First we learned that Bibi is somewhat paranoid about the Israeli media, and that he thinks Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod -- two of Obama's top advisers -- are "self-hating Jews."

Then he told Germany's foreign minister that the West Bank can't become "Judenrein," the Nazi term for an area cleared of Jews. This prompted a stunned nod from the foreign minister. (I guess the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has dragged on long enough that Godwin's law now applies?)

And now we learn his administration wants to keep "much" of the Golan Heights in any peace agreement with Syria.

Israeli president Shimon Peres seems to hint at a future deal for the Golan Heights if Syria is willing to renounce its support for Hizballah.

"Assad must understand that he will have to sit at the negotiations table if he wants real peace. He should not depend on mediators; he should sit at the table without any preconditions."

[..] "Assad must make a strategic choice. There is no way that Assad will get territorial concessions from Israel while at the same time maintaining ties with Hezbollah and Iran in a package deal."

The substance of Peres' remarks is not hugely different from what Avigdor Lieberman said last month: The Israelis don't want the Golan on the table as a precondition for diplomacy.

But he at least suggests Israel is willing to entertain "territorial concessions" -- returning the Golan -- in exchange for security guarantees.

A little saber-rattling from Syria, where officials basically threaten Israel with war if it doesn't return the Golan Heights.

During a ceremony Saturday inaugurating a new communications center in Kuneitra, the Syrian town closest to the border with Israel, the Syrian Committee for the Liberation of the Golan threatened to take practical measures to return the Golan to Syrian control, adding that Israel was not showing any willingness to negotiate the return of the territory in peace talks.

The "committee" is a militant group that's believed to receive support from parts of the Syrian government, similar to a Hizballah (but without the political wing). Israel, of course, has no intention of returning the Golan.

Interesting bit of diplomatic news from the Lebanese paper Al-Mustaqbal: Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad sent Obama a letter saying he wants a better relationship with the U.S. (Yedioth Ahronoth has an account of the Al-Mustaqbal article, which I can't find on their Web site.)

According to the report, Assad used Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to relay his message, which included a four-part request: For the US to reinstate its ambassador to Damascus, for it to take Syria off its terror watch list, for the US-Syrian-Iraqi coordinating committee - tasked with supervising the Syrian-Iraqi border - to resume its activities, and for Obama to commit to and sponsor Damascus' peace talks with Jerusalem.

The first part of that request is already done, according to the State Department.

Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad says he wants to negotiate with Israel -- but doesn't have anyone to talk to:

"Achieving peace requires an Israeli partner and commitment to international law, United Nations resolutions and the land for peace principles," Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said after meeting his Greek counterpart Karolos Papoulias.

My guess: This is a response to Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's insistence that he won't talk about returning the Golan Heights. There are no Israel-Syria talks if the Golan isn't on the table.