Syrian President (which is to say, dictator) Bashar Assad has some thoughts on Israel for investigative journalist extraordinaire Seymour Hersh. The clearest stand he takes is that there will be no peace until Syria gets the Golan Heights back: “Peace treaty is what you sign, but peace is when you have normal relations,” he explains. “So, you start with a peace treaty in order to achieve peace. … If they say you can have the entire Golan back, we will have a peace treaty. But they cannot expect me to give them the peace they expect. … You start with the land; you do not start with peace.”
Analyzing Israel’s efforts vis-à-vis the Palestinians (half a million of whose refugees, Assad notes, reside in Syria), he argues,
