Word: assads
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Concerns about Syria began to escalate in August, when officials in Damascus started threatening to use force to reclaim the Golan, the Syrian plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 war. Syrian President Hafez Assad was plainly frustrated by the policies of the new Israeli government of Netanyahu, who, unlike his two immediate predecessors, rules out a return of the strategic high land in exchange for a comprehensive peace treaty...
Soon after the menacing statements from Syria, Israeli defense officials say, they noticed that Assad was training his forces more aggressively, emphasizing attack rather than defense strategies. Most ominously, he moved his 14th division, an elite commando outfit, from Beirut, where it protects Syrian interests in Lebanon, to positions close to the frontier with Israel. Syrian officials say the recent activity is defensive and insist they have no plans to strike. Moreover, many Arab analysts accuse Israel of playing up the war talk as a means of diverting attention from the paralysis in the peace process since Netanyahu came...
Still, right or wrong, the Israelis are convinced that Assad has a scheme in his head: to use special forces to grab and hold a small piece of the Golan Heights, creating a crisis that would compel the U.S. to intervene and restart negotiations, presumably resulting in Syria's recovery of the Golan. Because Assad understands well that his forces are inferior to Israel's, no one thinks he would provoke a full-scale war. But that might still be the result, were Israel to respond to a limited land grab, as it has threatened, with a disproportionately severe counterattack...
...response to Assad's moves, the Israelis have increased their intelligence gathering and are planning and rehearsing their responses to a Syrian offensive. In addition to taking regular troops through their paces, as in the two major tank exercises held recently, commanders are perfecting plans to call up reserves, who make up the bulk of the military. In headquarters across the Golan Heights, the lights scarcely go out any more as officers work through the night...
...bickering in the Israeli political scene. "It's in the Labor Party's interest to show that they can bring peace and Likud can't," McGeary said. The book maintains that Rabin agreed to a full withdrawal from the Golan after the U.S. informed him that Syrian President Hafez Assad, in a change of positions, agreed to accept all the security arrangements demanded by Israel. The understandings, including details of withdrawal and normalization of relations, were then spelled out by the Clinton administration in a non-binding document, Azulai-Katz said. Two senior Israeli officials have denied that any such...