Word: assad
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What has happened in Hama has happened, and it is all over." With that terse declaration, Syria's President Hafez Assad last week acknowledged for the first time that his country's fifth largest city had been racked by fierce revolt in recent weeks. Assad insisted that life in Hama was back to normal, but the three-week rebellion is believed to have damaged much of the city's old quarter and killed more than 1,000 people. A Western diplomat who was able to get to the edges of Hama described destruction on the outskirts...
...uprising was the most serious challenge yet to the eleven-year-old regime of Assad and his ruling Baath Party. The fighting apparently began when security forces searched throughout Hama to uncover hideouts of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic organization violently opposed to Assad's secularist policies. Members of the Brotherhood reacted by attacking the homes of Baath Party officials and the police station. Describing the incident over Damascus Radio, Baath officials said the rebels, "driven like mad dogs by their black hatred, pounced on our comrades while sleeping in their homes and killed whomever they could...
...told Dinitz that if and when the negotiations resumed, Israel had to show more understanding of Syrian pride. It had to widen the Syrian territory around Quneitra; it must, within the limits of its security, attempt an act of grace. I in turn would try to head off Assad's demand that Israel give up its defense line on the western hills Thus the agony of Ma'alot was the chrysalis of the eventual breakthrough...
...both sides, as he had done in the Egyptian negotiation in January. He suggested further Israeli withdrawals west of Quneitra and continued Israeli control of the hills, but with limited arms. When the Israelis agreed to a ban on weapons that could fire from the hills directly into Quneitra, Assad accepted. Now Kissinger pressed both sides to wrap
After Ma 'alot, Israel felt an agreement had to mention terrorism. But the Syrians could not dissociate themselves publicly from the Palestinians. So it was not Sisco but Kissinger on the shuttle to Damascus the next day. There Assad made the crucial point. As Kissinger writes, "The absence of guerrilla activity in the past had been no accident. The Golan would not be guerrilla country because of Syria's chosen policy, not because of Israeli threats or non-binding Syrian promises." Kissinger decided to omit mention of terrorism from the agreements but to offer Israel a U.S. assurance that...