evidence: The Clinton administration did not initially make Israeli-Palestinian peace a priority. Clinton and his advisors believed that a diplomatic breakthrough on the Israeli-Syrian track would be more likely, and that Israel’s leaders would find it politically easier to pull back from the Golan Heights than to withdraw from the West Bank. An Israeli-Syrian agreement, they reasoned, would also lead to an Israeli-Lebanese agreement, and help isolate Iraq and Iran, the principal regional opponents of the peace process. U.S. officials were briefed on secret negotiations that the Israelis and Palestinians had begun in Oslo in December 1992, but made little effort to get involved in them.