Turkey is hosting a fourth round of negotiations between Syria and Israel on Tuesday. However, the parties will not be meeting face to face, according to statements from Damascus and Jerusalem. It had been hoped that by now the countries would have embarked on direct talks, but Syria’s President Bashar Al-Asad made it clear a month ago it was too early for that and there was still plenty of groundwork to be done by the technical teams. Key to the negotiations is the fate of the Golan Heights. Israel took the mountain plateau in the 1967 (Six-Day) war. Since then Syria has been demanding the return of the strategically important and fertile region.