Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, until the last moment (at least during my conversations with him in Paris after his defection from Bashar al-Assad’s regime), insisted on referring to Hafez al-Assad as “President Hafez,” while describing Bashar as an illegitimate child.
Once, I asked him: “Abu Jamal, we have read a lot about the Zionist enemy, at least during the government of Yitzhak Rabin, being ready to withdraw from the occupied Golan Heights and other Syrian territories by 98%. It is said that Hafez al-Assad did not accept a settlement with the enemy, and President Bill Clinton revealed to Assad what was called the Rabin Deposit, with detailed information. Clinton supposedly told Assad during their meeting in a European city: ‘Rabin agreed that Syrian forces would reach the Sea of Galilee, and you told me that you used to swim in it when you were a young officer in the Syrian army. But Rabin tells you that your feet will not reach the water.’ This was a decisive signal that the Zionist enemy would not return all of the Golan Heights to Syria.”
I asked Abu Jamal: “Why didn’t Assad agree to this agreement, which would have returned 98% of the occupied Syrian territories?” Khaddam replied: “High-ranking security officials and Alawite dignitaries, including religious figures, raised the same question to Assad. He responded to everyone with a single statement: ‘I do not want it recorded on Syrians that the Israeli flag was raised in the capital of the Umayyads during the rule of an Alawite president!'”
I heard from one of the close associates of the late President Hosni Mubarak that Rabin carried a message to President Hafez al-Assad. The message, word for word, was: “Tell Hafez al-Assad that I want to be in Damascus, but I will not come to Damascus to eat the kamer aldeen
I asked Khaddam: “Are you convinced, Abu Jamal, that Hafez al-Assad did not make a deal with Israel to recover the entire occupied Syrian territories except for 2%, just to avoid seeing the Zionist flag in the sky of Damascus?”
Here, Abu Jamal was straightforward with me, as mentioned earlier: Abu Ali (Khaddam insisted on using my Egyptian nickname, as anyone named Hassan in Egypt is called Abu Ali, and I am Abu Ahmad) President Hafez knew that any agreement with Israel to end the conflict would be followed by entirely different political, economic, and social measures than those preceding it. He had the experience of Anwar Sadat in Egypt, who followed the agreements he made with Israel with internal economic, media, political, and party openness. Various parties emerged, starting from the right, left, and center on the platforms, and independent and opposition newspapers were allowed to be established. All of this was impossible for President Hafez to accept. He idolized and could not bear that anyone or any pen touched him, his family, or his regime.
Abu Jamal continued: The proposed openness would not stop at economic borders; it would extend to govern media, parties, culture, mass movements, universities, and students. This was absolutely forbidden by the Charter of the National Progressive Front that President Hafez formulated, in which anyone outside the Ba’ath Party was prohibited from working in the student unions. Naturally, there were even more restrictions in the army.
Hafez al-Assad feared the people, especially intellectuals, and he understood their influence. Syria, before him and for many years, was vibrant with political and cultural life, in addition to the influence of Lebanese vitality that he feared.
