Take Advantage of Syria's Transition

"Hafez Assad is dead, and he did not sign," read the headline in Al-Nahar, Lebanon's leading Arabic-language newspaper, a day after the Syrian leader suffered a fatal heart attack on June 10. Indeed, Assad never did sign a peace treaty with his Israeli enemies, a move that earned him much respect in the Arab world, at least among those who regard a settlement as tantamount to surrender.

Esteem, however, is different than political influence. It was Assad's fate to die even as his once-vaunted Lebanon policy came under considerable stress. When Israeli forces withdrew unilaterally from southern Lebanon, Syria was denied the military leverage over Israel that it enjoyed through its support of Hezbollah, and, in the process, it became more difficult for Assad or his successor to negotiate an acceptable deal on the Golan Heights.

Since the Assad-Clinton meeting in Geneva last March, Syria has been accused of inflexibility. The accusation is unfair. Syria made several significant concessions during the Shepherdstown talks, including acceptance of an Israeli-Syrian boundary commission--meaning that it was willing to negotiate final borders on the Golan to the satisfaction of both sides rather than simply demand an Israeli withdrawal to the fixed lines corresponding to the pre-June 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

In contrast, just before the Clinton-Assad parlay, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, asked Clinton to advance his maximal conditions: Israeli control over all water sources near the Golan--Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River and the Hamma Springs--and land access to them. Not only was this unacceptable to Assad, it was a step backward from what had been discussed earlier. The Syrian leader read the writing on the wall: The U.S. and Israel believed that Syria was not powerful enough to force a better deal.

The shift in the balance of power away from Syria was compounded by the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Assad, having seen the Americans turn against him at Geneva, watched as international efforts led by the United States and the U.N. were directed at demilitarizing the Lebanese-Israeli border area. Another card was being snatched from the Syrian hand.

When the Syrians feel threatened, they respond in Lebanon. Realizing that he was cornered, Assad moved to ensure that the Lebanese government would avoid militarily neutralizing the border area. The Lebanese complied, citing boundary disputes with Israel as an excuse to not disarm Hezbollah. They also have refused to deploy a sizable contingent of Lebanese army troops along the border, arguing, rather oddly, that Lebanon refuses to protect Israeli territory.