Is Hafiz al-Asad interested in peace with Israel?
There are now two models of Arab negotiation with Israel, the Sadat model and the ‘Arafat model. Sadat was essentially sincere; even if he did harbor some Machiavellian ideas about undermining Israel by accepting it, he changed his policy and made peace with it. ‘Arafat, to the contrary, was insincere. He used the negotiating process as an end in itself (primarily to split the United States from Israel) and never had a change of heart about Israel. I believe Asad fits the ‘Arafat model much more closely than the Sadat one. This makes me pessimistic about his reaching an accord with Israel. Why such pessimism? After all, Asad is more like Sadat than ‘Arafat; he heads a state and he seeks to regain some real estate. Why doubt his sincerity? Because of internal Syrian politics. Here the key fact is that Asad comes from a despised minority community, the ‘Alawis. This is a large and complicated issue, but suffice to say that an ‘Alawi ruling in Damascus is about as unacceptable to the Sunn
