ABSTRACT
On December 14, 1993, the United Na-tions General Assembly broke with decades of relentless attacks against Israel. Itamar Rabinovich has unique credentials for writing about the failed talks Syria and Israel held from 1992 to 1996. He is a leading academic specialist both on Syria and on Arab-Israeli negotiations, and he served during that period as the Israeli ambassador to Wash-ington and as Israel's chief negotiator with Syria. American officials insist on seeing Syria as helpful to Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) efforts to reach an agreement. Starting in 1984, a Marxist-Leninist organization, the Worker's Party of Kurdistan (PKK), began using Syria as a launching board for terrorist attacks on Turkey. By 1992, Turkish officials began speaking publicly about the PKK problem; the Syrians responded by signing a second security protocol. Turks grew increasingly agitated as Syrians made promises they did not carry out.
