Political Calculus in the Region Swiftly Altered

Peace between Syria and Israel--protagonists of the last Middle Eastern war--has depended heavily on the desires and determinations of one man: Syrian President Hafez Assad.

The much-heralded breakthrough that revived Syria’s negotiations with Israel late last year was attributed, in part, to the ailing Assad’s urgent need to strike a deal before he died.

On Saturday, the deadline came.

With negotiations already frozen, Assad’s death will spawn a nerve-racking era of uncertainty, unknowns and potential chaos. As with the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon last month, the death of Assad has abruptly altered all of the familiar calculations.

At the very least, and for the foreseeable future, the peace process is likely to stand at a hard stalemate, relegated to the sidelines while the post-Assad regime is established. Power struggles or political upheaval inside Syria could spill over into the region, threatening, most notably, the tense and newly formed Israeli-Lebanese border.

Eventually, some Middle Eastern officials and analysts believe, the end of the Assad era could create opportunities with a more pragmatic and flexible leadership. And in the meantime, the peacemaking focus of both Israel and the United States will shift almost exclusively to the Palestinians, who have often felt that they were in competition with Syria for attention.

“The first priority for the Syrian regime--and for the U.S. and Israel too--is to seek stability,” said Itamar Rabinovich, president of Tel Aviv University and a former Israeli ambassador to Washington who led a negotiating team to Syria in the early 1990s. “We’ve been used to a stable Syria for three decades. Syria was very unstable in the past, and when it is unstable, it affects the whole region. . . . It can rock the boat in Syria, Lebanon, the Golan. . . .”

Any potential advance in the Israeli-Syrian peace process will be delayed, Rabinovich predicted--and after that, there’s “no telling,” he said.

Recovering the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War, was Assad’s crusade. The two countries remained implacable foes, though their disputed border has been one of the most quiet in the region since 1973, when the last bloody battles were fought.

With the border in mind, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, upon learning of Assad’s death, summoned the Israeli army chief of staff to his home Saturday and ordered that troops be put on high alert, state television reported.

Barak, whose overtures to Damascus last year revived formal talks in December, seemed fascinated by the paranoid Assad. He spoke of him, initially, in almost glowing terms, until the negotiations broke down over the issue of a final sliver of the Golan along the vital Sea of Galilee, which Israel wants to retain for a secure source of fresh water.

Israelis regarded Assad as a wily and obdurate opponent, and the departure of a man who seemed to have a visceral hatred for Israel was celebrated in some quarters Saturday. Yet Israelis also knew that a deal with Assad would count, guaranteed by his all-powerful control over Syria.

It seems doubtful that Assad’s expected successor, his 34-year-old son, Bashar, will be able to command the same domestic obedience. The consensus is that Bashar, an eye doctor and untested political leader, initially will have his hands full attempting to consolidate his power before embarking on such ambitious and divisive initiatives as peace with the Zionist enemy.

Once Bashar’s transition to the presidency is complete--and if it is peaceful--he may be inclined to move toward striking a deal with Israel. He has less of an emotional attachment to recovering the Golan and correcting what the Syrians see as an injustice. The elder Assad, by contrast, was determined to get back land where, he reportedly told President Clinton, he picnicked as a boy--land that Syria lost on Assad’s watch as defense minister.

That burden of history does not weigh on Bashar’s shoulders. In his grooming period, he has been credited with efforts to modernize Syria’s moribund economy, fight corruption and expand technology to end the country’s isolation.

On the other hand, Bashar will be attempting to gain the loyalty of the armed forces and other elites whose allegiance to Assad was automatic. The need to prove himself could force Bashar to take a hard line in any future negotiations with Israel.

“He faces the new element of having to build the legitimacy of his own government,” said Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab lawmaker who has met on several occasions with the Assads. “And the importance of getting back every inch of the Golan is greatly symbolic in this context.”

Bashar’s other duty has been to take charge of Syria’s Lebanon portfolio. As Syria’s client state, Lebanon has seen a lot of Bashar in the last year or so, as he enforced his father’s rule down to the tedious detail of helping to redraw legislative districts.

Many Lebanese were worried Saturday, however, that a Syrian power vacuum would allow the more than 30,000 Syrian soldiers who occupy Lebanon to stir trouble. Also, there were fears that the Hezbollah Islamic guerrillas, who successfully fought to oust Israel from southern Lebanon and who are patronized by Syria, would take advantage of the distraction and launch an attack on Israel to inflame the border. Hezbollah is deployed throughout southern Lebanon, and Syria until now has refused to let Lebanon dispatch its own army to the region to keep the peace.

Opposition to the Syrian presence in Lebanon has become more vocal in recent weeks, and many Lebanese on Saturday said they hope the death of Assad will begin to crack Damascus’ control over Beirut.

Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader whose long-term, bitter rivalry with Assad is well known, also may get a boost from the Syrian’s death. Peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are bound to take center stage, and Arafat is rid of a rival who never tired of pointing out what he considered to be Arafat’s willingness to kowtow to the Israelis.

Damascus is headquarters for the so-called rejectionist factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization that oppose Arafat’s peacemaking with Israel. Arafat declared three days of mourning in the West Bank and Gaza.