JERUSALEM — For several months in 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel engaged in secret, American-brokered discussions with Syria for a possible peace treaty based on a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

But the process was cut short by the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the Middle East in early 2011, soon spreading to Syria, and the treaty did not come to fruition, according to an Israeli, Michael Herzog, who was involved in the talks.

“Nothing was agreed between the parties,” Mr. Herzog said Friday. “It was a work in progress.”

Yediot Aharonot, a leading Israeli newspaper, first published details of the American-led effort on Friday, and Mr. Herzog, a former chief of staff to Israel’s defense minister and an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, confirmed the outlines of the discussions. He said in a telephone interview that he was called in to help with the process in 2010, although he had already retired from military and government service.

The contacts were mediated by Frederic Hof, who recently retired from the United States State Department, where he had served as a special coordinator for Lebanon and Syria, and Dennis B. Ross, who was then a special assistant to President Obama on the Middle East.