Assad's health and the peace process (Haratz 27/2/2000)
By Ze'ev Schiff

When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak returned home from a recent visit to his Syrian counterpart, Hafez Assad, he told his staff and foreign diplomats that anyone interested in signing a peace treaty with Assad's Syria should move quickly. Mubarak's meaning was that the Syrian president's health is not good and that no one knows what tomorrow will bring. Similar information about Assad's state of health is also coming in from other sources, foreign and local alike.Assad has good days, but he also has plenty of bad days. He no longer holds marathon meetings with his guests, as he once did. Sometimes he has difficulty escorting important guests.

His reactions are slow and he has to break off discussions in order to rest. It is clear that he is declining, but it is less clear what stage his decline has now reached.

None of this should be construed to mean that the decision-making process in Damascus has been adversely affected. No change is discernible in that regard. Assad's close circle is trying to keep him isolated in order to prevent any leakage of information about the state of his health.

The situation recalls the behavior of the confidants of Prime Minister Menachem Begin when Begin was ill and had sunk into depression, and there are plenty of other examples of attempts to keep the illness of leaders a secret.

The view in Washington is that the real reason for Assad's decision to suddenly renew the negotiations with Israel is, above all, his failing health. His awareness of his medical condition - although it is not clear how much he knows about the actual state of his health - led him to conclude that it would be worth his while to expedite certain processes as long as Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton are in power.

This, the Americans believe, was the catalyst - more than Barak's announcement that Israel would withdraw from Lebanon, even without an agreement - for the Syrian president's decision to resume the talks without insisting on some prior condition for the move.

In light of Assad's health, the question arises again whether it would not be worth delaying the negotiations until his successor, whoever he turns out to be, comes into power. The prevailing view in Israel is that it is best not to put off the peace process. Assad's successor will have to begin by stabilizing his rule, and he will not have time to embark upon a process of making peace with Israel - a move that the Syrians consider to be sensitive and painful - and after that it is not clear whether he will show greater flexibility than Assad.

So the view in the Israeli leadership is that it is best to sign a treaty with Assad that will be largely implemented by his successor; indeed, this will make life easier for the new Syrian leader.

This assessment ignores the fact that even though there is opposition to peace in Syria, there are also increasingly strong forces that are interested in peace and change. Those forces were ahead of Assad in understanding that Syria needs to open itself to the advent of a new era. An example is the Syrian business community, from which a delegation recently visited the United States and left a good impression there.

With the Palestinians, too, the succession question could arise at any moment, though with Yasser Arafat the degree of urgency differs. There are, in fact, pronounced differences between the Palestinians and the Syrians in this regard. First, despite his illness, Arafat's condition is far better than Assad's. He is in full control of the internal situation and continues to maneuver smoothly between domestic pressures from his people and Israel. Another difference, one which is to the Palestinians' detriment, is that they have no mechanism for appointing a successor, and one attempt that was made toward setting up such a system was scuttled by Arafat.

In addition, Arafat as a leader constitutes a unifying factor and a national symbol for the Palestinians. There is no one else like him who is capable of convincing them to sign a compromise agreement with Israel and bring the conflict to an end. All the experts believe that Arafat's departure from the scene before a peace treaty is signed will cause severe jolts, generate instability and bring about a major delay in the peace process. The Americans say that perhaps a decade would go by before another serious opportunity to make peace would present itself.
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