"... core principle of defying Israeli dominance, refusing to kneel before Washington ..."

Sands, in the National/ here

"... More than that, he remains indelibly part of the Middle East’s turbulent political landscape. Today is the 10th anniversary of his death and his legacy still pervades the region.

Hafez Assad’s political views were forged in 1967 when the Arab world was crushed by Israel in the Naksa, also known as the Six Day War. After assuming control of Syria in 1970, he spent the next 30 years trying to overturn that defeat.

With Arab land, including Syria’s Golan Heights, still under illegal Israeli occupation, Assad refused to walk the path of compliant moderation taken by Jordan and Egypt, both of which signed peace deals with Israel. To him – as to most of the Arabs – Israel was a project in violent colonialism, funded and armed by modern western imperialists, and intent on expansion.

He saw himself as the only real obstacle standing in the Zionists’ way, the champion of Arab rights.

Under his rule, all means were deployed in opposition to Israel, often at great cost to his own country. Following the limited success of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Damascus won back a sliver of the Golan, a subtler foreign policy became Syria’s major currency.......

Assad did not live to see victory. Syria remains at war with Israel, its territory still under occupation. But the late president’s unswerving devotion to the cause, and some of the tools he used to fight for it – including Hizbollah and radical Palestinian groups – were passed on to his son, Bashar al Assad, the man who succeeded him after his death......... while undeniably ruling with a softer touch, he shares his father’s intolerance of internal dissent.

The foreign policy foundation stone laid down by Hafez Assad remains firmly in place however, that core principle of defying Israeli dominance, refusing to kneel before Washington and Israel despite their economic and military power, and refusing to accept that Israel has the right to seize land by force.

Assad had a golden rule, one his son and allies continue to adhere to; real peace with Israel – and therefore the only peace deal worth signing – should restore the region to its pre-1967 borders and be comprehensive, resolving the interlinked Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian problems together.

Repeated, and for the most part half-heated, attempts at concluding a Middle East peace have never met those criteria and it has become fashionable, at least in certain influential circles, to view Israel’s conflict with Syria as distinct from its conflict with the Palestinians.

For those reasons, among others, peace is still elusive. While Syria cannot claim to have won, Israel has also failed to secure the victory it hoped for..."