Israelis Have an Odd Concern--Assad’s Welfare

Although they have little reason to wish him well, a number of Israeli officials and military analysts are beginning to express concern over the welfare of Syria’s President Hafez Assad.

Over the last year or so, analysts say, there have been several signs that Assad may be losing his iron grip on Syria because of his personal health, a deteriorating national economy, increasing domestic unrest and other factors.

This worries the Israelis, not because they have any fondness for Assad but because for years their assessments of Syrian intentions have been based to a large extent on their ability to anticipate what the Syrian leader plans to do.

Since seizing power in a military coup in 1970, Assad has made virtually every major decision in Syria. During that time, Israeli analysts have come to develop a grudging respect for him as a very smart and pragmatic, if ruthless, ruler who rarely miscalculates a situation and usually manages to manipulate it to his advantage.

But if Assad’s control is beginning to slip, it could introduce an element of unpredictability into what is already a highly tense military situation between Israel and Syria, and this worries the analysts in Israel.

Supervision Slipping

Although there is no suggestion yet that Assad faces a serious challenge to his rule, one highly placed Israeli source said Israel has mounting evidence that Assad’s previously close supervision of Syria’s various intelligence organizations may be slipping.

The source said he was not at liberty to discuss all the evidence Israel has. But he said that one sign Assad may not be aware of the full extent of these organizations’ activities was the attempt to place a bomb aboard an El Al Israel Airlines jetliner at London’s Heathrow Airport on April 17.

Despite Assad’s denials of Syrian responsibility, Israel maintains that it has evidence of Syrian involvement in the attempt. “We even know the Syrian intelligence entity that planned it,” the Israeli source said.

The incident puzzled Israeli officials as much as it shocked them because--if their suspicions were true--it seemed to indicate that Syria was departing from what has always been an extremely cautious and professional modus operandi to adopt a higher and more reckless profile in international terrorism.

“The Syrians have always been involved in terrorism, but the new features are the higher profile and the clumsy way they have allowed their fingerprints to appear,” an Israeli official said. “This is not characteristic of them.”

The incident was doubly puzzling because it came while the smoke was still clearing from the U.S. air strike against Libya two days earlier and amid what appears to have been genuine alarm in Damascus that Israel might take advantage of Washington’s new hawkish attitude toward terrorism to launch a preemptive military strike against Syria.

The prevailing view among military analysts here is that Assad is striving to achieve “strategic parity” with Israel in order to be able to fight a war and win it but knows that he has not yet achieved this goal and does not want to risk a war before he is ready for it.

Aware that there are people in Israel who argue loudly that Israel should strike first rather than wait until Syria is ready, Assad has been “careful to improve his military position by increments so as not to provoke us,” according to a military source who watches Syria closely.

Thus the Heathrow affair was puzzling, because if the plot had succeeded and the El Al plane had been blown up, it would almost certainly have triggered just the type of massive Israeli military response that Assad is thought to be trying to avoid.

Indeed, so out of character was the El Al incident, in terms of both timing and execution, that some Israeli analysts who blame Syria strongly suspect that Assad may not have known about it.

“I’m not at all sure he knew, and this may be part of a trend,” one Israeli source said. “Over the past year and a half, we have not been seeing the same Assad that we knew. He is making uncharacteristic mistakes.”

Until now, military analyst Zev Schiff said, “Assad was in quite firm control of what was going on in his country. But in the past few weeks, Syria has gone into a certain tailspin concerning internal matters.” He said it is quite possible that one of Syria’s intelligence arms initiated the El Al incident “on its own in order to speed up certain processes in Syria and in the region.”

There are other signs that Assad may be in trouble at home. Although he has always kept a tight lid on his country, domestic terrorism has been on the rise. On the day of the U.S. raid on on Libya, seven bombs went off almost simultaneously in Syria, causing heavy casualties. There have been several more attacks since then.

A kind of Who’s Who could be compiled from the list of possible suspects: the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, whose members have been ruthlessly attacked by Assad; Iraq, retaliating for Syria’s support of Iran in the Persian Gulf War; dissident members of Syria’s ruling Baath Party; Yasser Arafat’s segment of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any of several militant Lebanese groups ranging from Maronite Christians to pro-Iranian Muslims who are opposed, for different reasons, to Assad’s attempts to impose Syrian hegemony over Lebanon.

The domestic strife is increasing at a time when Syria’s precarious economy is sinking deeper and deeper into trouble. Foreign currency reserves have dwindled to nearly nothing, food shortages are widespread and electric power is turned off for several hours a day.

Financial support from the Persian Gulf states used to provide a cushion, but these countries have suspended most of their aid because of Syria’s support for Iran, which, to make matters worse, is beginning to display hostility toward Syria because of its heavy-handed efforts to tame pro-Iranian Shia Muslims in Lebanon.

Far from being the clever manipulator who always manages to turn setbacks to his advantage, Assad, 57, is looking increasingly isolated and on the defensive at a time when his health is said to be deteriorating after a heart attack two years ago.

“There is a temptation to attribute his uncharacteristic behavior to his health,” an Israeli source said. “He has made a number of blunders in Lebanon . . . He seems now to be a man in a hurry. He is not as prudent or calculating as before.”

The danger in this, Israeli military analysts say, is the added uncertainty that Syrian instability injects into the already unstable Israeli-Syrian situation, especially on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 war.

Military Buildup

Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June, 1982, Syria has been “steadily building up its armed forces to the point where even a slight miscalculation could start a war even if neither side wants it,” one military source said. “It is a hair-trigger situation.”

Indeed, the raids against Libya and the attempted El Al bombing, and the apprehension they raised on both sides, increased tension to the point where open talk of war was heard earlier this month, despite the lack of any military provocation by either side.

The tension now appears to have subsided, and, for the moment at least, Israeli military analysts say they are fairly confident that Syria will not start a war. But the risk of inadvertent escalation, they say, is still there--and is likely to increase if Israel becomes less confident of its ability to read Syrian intentions.