Submitted by Brodsky on Fri, 06/27/2008 - 15:03
A faintly hopeful aspect of the current frost between Syria and Israel is that Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems determined to bring the two countries to the negotiating table. Turkey has emerged over the past year as the principle, indeed the only serious, broker between these bitter enemies.
Patrick Seale, author and biographer of the late Syrian president, Hafiz al-Asad recently shared his views on the prospects of a Syrian-Israeli peace. The original article can be read at Middle East Online.
The Prospects for a Syrian-Israeli Peace
The Prospects for a Syrian-Israeli Peace
By, Patrick Seale
May 2, 2008A faintly hopeful aspect of the current frost between Syria and Israel is that Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems determined to bring the two countries to the negotiating table. Turkey has emerged over the past year as the principle, indeed the only serious, broker between these bitter enemies.
From Madrid to Geneva: The Rise and Fall of the Syrian-Israeli Peace Process, 1991-2000
The United States emerged as the world's sole superpower in the aftermath of the Gulf War in March 1991 with unprecedented prestige in the Middle East. The first Bush administration, eager to proceed with its 'new world order' seized the proverbial 'window of opportunity' to forge a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. This presented Syria, Israel, and the United States with a series of both challenges and opportunities.From Father to Son: Ruling the Syrian State
Syrian politics were highly unstable from their April 1946 independence until November 1970, when Hafiz al-Asad came to power. During the two decades following the 1948 war in Palestine, Syria experienced 20 military-backed coups or attempted coups, including the state's brief dissolution into the United Arab Republic with Egypt from 1958-1961. In 1963, the Ba'th Party came to power yet intense infighting among Syria's ruling elite and various leadership factions persisted. While Asad - an 'Alawi of the Kalbiyya tribe - was a Ba'th Party member who participated in the 1963 coup and served as Defense Minister during the 1967 war, he favored a more pragmatic approach and seized power in the 1970 Corrective Revolution (al-Thawra al-Tashihiyya). Unlike the previous military coups that saw army units and their commanders fighting each other, the Corrective Revolution was a kind of victory of the army over itself. For the next three decades until Asad's death in June 2000, he brought Syria something they had never experienced before: stability - his regime's greatest accomplishment. Asad's biographer, Patrick Seale, summed up the two phases of the struggle in the titles of two separate books, The Struggle for Syria, 1945-1958,[3] and Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East,[4] thereby drawing the distinction between the initial internal struggle and subsequent quest to dominate the region. From Father to Son: Ruling the Syrian State
Friday 21 January 1994 should have been a normal day for Dr. Bashar al-Asad, the son of Hafiz, president of the Syrian Arab Republic. He was in London practicing ophthalmology when his world was shaken with the news of the death of his older brother, Basil, who was killed in a car accident in Syria. His father Hafiz al-Asad also wanted to be a doctor when he was young but his family could not afford to finance his education so he settled for a military career instead. In many aspects, Bashar was fulfilling his father's dreams much like his older sister, Bushra, who was studying pharmacology. Since Hafiz's heart attack in 1983, questions about succession in Syria became an important topic. Basil had been groomed to take his father's place; with his death, Hafiz's eyes turned to Bashar.[1] With Hafiz al-Asad's death on 10 June 2000 and the transfer of power to Bashar, many wondered what Syria would like in the 21st century after three decades of stable rule under Asad Sr. Flynt Leverett described three conflicting images of Bashar that dominated analytic debates and policy arguments about Syria:
