Word: assad
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...March 26, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad met with President Clinton in Geneva in a failed summit on peace in the Middle East. The Syrian leader has no plans to hold such a meeting with Israeli premier Ehud Barak. This diplomatic picture speaks a thousand words of Syrian intentions...
Syria's on-again, off-again attempts at negotiations with Israel reflect Assad's begrudging acceptance that the road to Washington runs through Jerusalem. Assad learned this lesson from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, whose country now receives $1.8 billion of annual U.S. assistance after signing a peace agreement with Israel in 1979. Syria's crumbling economy sorely needs an injection of U.S. financial assistance that Assad believes comes part-and-parcel with a peace agreement. While Assad remembers Sadat's roadmap, his selective memory forgets the diplomatic strategy that must accompany it. No Sadat-like visits to the Israeli parliament...
Quizzically, Assad has not only refrained from making peaceful overtures, but has indulged in vitriolic rhetoric that presses the Israeli public's most sensitive nerve. In recent weeks, the official Syrian press--the mouthpiece of the regime--compared the Jewish state to Nazi Germany and denied the Holocaust. To further alienate Israelis, Syria has stepped up support for the terrorist group Hezbollah. Barak has promised his people a referendum should he reach an agreement with his Syrian interlocutors, but these statements, coupled with Syrian-backed violence in Lebanon, harden the Israeli electorate against a peace treaty with Syria and make...
...would Assad deliberately endanger his opportunity to reclaim the Golan Heights? Some try to explain away Assad's behavior on the grounds that he is an aging autocrat who does not comprehend Barak's political needs as a democratic leader. Assad should be granted more credit. For the past thirty years, the shrewd Syrian leader has defined himself as the Middle East's cold calculator par excellence, and there is no exception here. Assad is well aware of the fact that his actions hinder Barak's ability to muster Israeli public support in a future referendum. The Sphinx of Damascus...
...Assad's avoidance of confidence-building measures has proven a winning bargaining tactic. The more Syrian provocations erode Barak's political capital with Israelis, the more pliable Barak's negotiating position seems to become. To hasten an agreement, in recent weeks Barak has made subtle but significant concessions. He hinted at acquiescing to Syria's incessant demand that Israel withdraw from the Golan Heights down to the June 4, 1967 borders by asserting that previous Israeli prime ministers have conceded the same. Now Barak ponders dropping the demand for a continued Israeli presence on the Mount Hermon early warning station...