Our Life and Times (by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes)
July 2000

Assad's death, Israel's Lebanon pullout

The death of Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad, preceded by Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, has created a new situation in the Middle East. Assad ruled with an iron hand after taking power in 1970. Just before his death, he installed his son, Bashar al-Assad, as his anointed successor. Assad's power lay in the military and especially the Alawite religious minority, only 15% of the population. Even if Bashar, who has no military background, can survive the jockeying for power of the next months, he will still face the fact that, as some of his rivals have been eliminated, the regime's base of support has become even narrower than before.

According to Amnesty International, Syria has at least 1,500 political prisoners, many of whom have been in jail for over 15 years and quite a few of whom have been tortured. Assad did not stay in power by fear alone, however. In the early years of his rule, some improvements in education, housing and other areas reached the masses.

Assad also played upon fears of Islamic fundamentalism in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He ruthlessly crushed a Sunni Muslim fundamentalist uprising in 1982, telling not only his fellow Alawites, but also the Christian and Druze minorities as well as more secular elements, that he was all that stood behind them and a fundamentalist takeover.

Assad was also remarkably astute at playing the Arab nationalist card to gain at least some popular support both at home and abroad. Many, including leftists whose own co-thinkers languished in his prisons, remained silent about his brutality and betrayals because of his intransigence toward Israel, as well as his verbal support for Arab unity.

This was how Assad gained a foothold in Lebanon in the 1970s, where he played no small role in crushing both the Palestinians and the Lebanese Left, who at the time believed he was an ally in their fight against the right-wing Christian establishment. The long Syrian military presence in Lebanon has stirred resentment there, while its expense has contributed to Syria's dire economic crisis.

Although Assad suppressed fundamentalists from the Sunni majority at home, in Lebanon he worked closely with Shi'ite fundamentalists, most recently the Iranian-funded Hezbollah. Now that Israel has finally pulled out of Lebanon, Hezbollah is claiming that it is the only Arab force that has ever defeated the Israelis on the ground. Today it is riding a wave of popular support throughout the Arab world, where few are questioning its very reactionary political program.

Hezbollah is also riding high because of the extreme brutality and arrogance of the Israelis in Lebanon ever since they invaded in 1982. Year after year, Israel has bombed whole cities in response to minor skirmishes, all designed to cow the Lebanese. It occupied southern Lebanon, installing there a force of brutal and corrupt mercenaries, the South Lebanon Army. Ultimately, Israeli public opinion turned against an endless war, forcing the government to pull out unilaterally.

When Hezbollah and other Lebanese groups "advise" the Palestinians to fight Israel just as they have done, rather than compromise for a few small concessions as has Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, there is also a subtext involved. They are implying that Lebanon's hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, many there since 1948, should all leave Lebanon, ostensibly to join that fight. In this way, Lebanese parties including Hezbollah, all of which talk of Arab unity, can cover over the fact they deny Palestinian refugees even the right to attend school or to work, let alone the possibility of citizenship. This policy is unique in the Arab world.

Inside Israel, the pullout from Lebanon has resulted in no respite for the Labor government of Ehud Barak. It faces mounting Palestinian protests against the way it has reneged on earlier agreements to cede most of the West Bank or to release the more than 1,650 Palestinian political prisoners, let alone its refusal even to negotiate over some type of dual status for Jerusalem.

The fractured nature of Israeli domestic politics has made the government dependent upon the votes of religious extremists like the Shas Party. In response, Barak has once again caved in to Shas, expelling from the government members of the secular left Meretz Party. In addition to moving his government to the right, this brings to an end some valuable education reforms.