Israelis Ask if Assad’s Death Is Good or Bad

Israelis were engaged in a favorite pastime Sunday: dissecting political intrigue that, this time, engulfed the region following the death Saturday of Syrian President Hafez Assad.

It is a vital exercise for a country flanked by enemies. Is Assad’s passing good or bad for the Israeli view of what it takes to make peace?

For starters, the Israeli government apparently decided to put a hopeful face on the transition in Syria from Assad’s three-decade autocratic rule to the new, untested leadership of his son Bashar.

Top commanders of the Israeli army briefed a closed Cabinet meeting Sunday, saying that intelligence assessments indicate that the 34-year-old Bashar Assad has secured his power base, at least initially, and that Syria remains stable and calm.

“The death of President Assad represents the end of an era,” Prime Minister Ehud Barak told his Cabinet, according to a statement issued by his office. “We are facing a new Middle East. It’s difficult to predict how things will develop, but things will be different in a number of spheres.”

Noting that Israel had spent the last decade, off and on, in negotiations with Syria, Barak vowed to continue these efforts with the new regime. He also said he hoped that Bashar Assad would take his place alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI as a representative of a new, progressive generation of leadership.

The widely held belief here--and Barak reiterated it Sunday--is that there will be no movement on the Israeli-Syrian peace process for the time being. Assad will have to consolidate his power before he can pursue diplomacy with his late father’s archenemy. And then, the betting is even money as to whether he will show more flexibility or take a hard-line approach.

The dispute between the two countries centers on the Golan Heights, land that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War. Syria wants it back; Israel will oblige, but wants to retain control of the Sea of Galilee, an important water source.

In the meantime, Israelis were not kidding themselves about grieving for Assad.

“We Israelis have no reason to shed tears over the death of Hafez Assad,” preeminent columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in a front-page essay in Sunday’s top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “It’s a waste of water. The man who missed so many trains, and through his intransigence and hesitation stopped all of the processes, has concluded his role in Middle Eastern history.”

Or, as political commentator Hemi Shalev put it: “We couldn’t live with him, and we couldn’t live without him. Now we have to hope that there is no truth in the saying that a devil you know is always better than one you don’t.”

Similarly, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat had no love lost for Assad, who never forgave him for undertaking the peace process with Israel. The Palestinians have often felt that they had to compete with the Syrians for the top slot on the U.S.-Israeli political agenda.

Only the Druze of the Golan Heights were in mourning for Assad. An estimated 17,000 Druze live in the Golan, and most consider themselves Syrian. Several hundred will be permitted a rare crossing into Syria today for Assad’s funeral Tuesday.

Barak, meanwhile, had to keep one eye on potential upheaval in Syria while looking out for his own political troubles.

With his government on the brink of collapse, Barak managed to put off confrontation on two fronts. He backed down from a threat to fire members of his government who voted against him in an embarrassing parliamentary showdown last week.

And he gave in to union demands by yanking a wide-ranging tax reform plan from consideration before the parliament. Israel’s most powerful labor union opposed the tax plan and was set to stage a crippling nationwide strike today. With the government’s concession, the union called off the strike.

The tax legislation was in a sense the first casualty of Barak’s weakened standing.

“Only a blind man can ignore the fact that it is not at all simple to deal with such a broad [tax] reform in a parliament over which you have no control,” Finance Minister Avraham Shohat said. “At the moment, we don’t even have a government which can formally pass important decisions.”

The union is led by Amir Peretz, who controls two parliament seats that Barak may find he needs.

Barak may argue to his unruly coalition that now is the time for unity in the face of regional instability and thus take advantage of the crisis to reform the same government that has caused him so many headaches. If he dismissed his rebellious ministers, Barak would be forced to form a narrow government with barely the votes to pass legislation--just when he most needs a free hand to conclude a definitive peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Instead of divorce, Barak said Sunday, he will attempt a reconciliation. To the chagrin of his core supporters, Barak has entered into negotiations with the most troublesome, and largest, of his coalition partners, the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party. Shas has been demanding millions of dollars for its bankrupt, corruption-plagued school system in exchange for its loyalty to the government.

Six Cabinet ministers, from Shas and two other parties, voted with the opposition last week in a preliminary call for early elections, a move that would topple Barak’s government scarcely 11 months after it came to office. Barak had been expected to use Sunday’s Cabinet meeting to dismiss the ministers but instead gave Shas until Wednesday to accept a compromise deal, the details of which were not revealed.