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syrian

Sharon Cool on Assad Peace Offer

Once upon a time, a Syrian president calling for peace talks would have been met by Israeli leaders rolling out the red carpet.

But Bashar Assad\’s recent overtures toward Israel, first made in an interview with The New York Times, have failed to excite Israeli decision-makers.

The chief of Israel\’s military intelligence branch, Maj. Gen. Aharon Farkash Ze\’evi, says Assad is serious and should be put to the test, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon doubts the Syrian leader\’s sincerity and questions whether giving up the strategic Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria is as much in Israel\’s interest as it once was.

Fearful Assad Places a Risky Bet on Saddam

Judging from his public statements, Assad seems convinced that the Bush administration will not stop at Iraq, and that after a U.S. victory in Baghdad, he could be next on the regime-change agenda.

Therefore, when Assad vilifies the United States and openly aids the Iraqi war effort, he believes he is fighting for his life. In late March, buoyed by what he saw as initial Iraqi success in resisting the U.S.-led invasion, Assad explained the basis of his thinking in a fierce diatribe against Israel and the United States.

The war in Iraq, he told the Lebanese newspaper, As-Safir, was an Israeli-American conspiracy \”designed to redraw the political map of the Middle East.\” In Assad\’s view, the United States would take Iraq\’s oil, and Israel would become the dominant regional power.

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More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.