Like Rabin, Ehud Barak is a man of logic. And, like Rabin, he lacks political intuition. Unlike Clinton, unlike Begin.

Immediately after the death of Assad, he could have appeared live on television, paid his respects to a great opponent, in spite of differences of opinion and conveyed his good wishes to his successor. That would not have cost him anything, even in domestic terms, and would have been a good investment for the future.

Instead, some blurred message was published in the name of "a source in the Prime Minister's office", as if it concerned another tiresome quarrel between Shass and Meretz.

Even Shimon Peres, who holds the patent of the "New Middle East", missed the opportunity. In a TV interview, he denounced the dead president and showered him with criticism. Suddenly he forgot that he is now an International Statesman and turned into another shallow TV commentator. Like most of the other commentators, he lacks elementary knowledge of Syrian affairs. (After all these years, he mispronounces the name of Assad," "lion" in Arabic, calling him Assaad.)

The basic problem of Syria is its divisiveness. Ancient enmities exist between Damascus in the south and Aleppo in the north, as well as between the other towns, who are separated from each other by wide, nearly empty spaces. Religion is splitting the nation between Sunnis, Alawites (perhaps Muslims, perhaps not), Druses, Greek-Orthodox and others. The Syrians know that they need an authoritative leader to hold the lot together.

The Bible tells us that the Israelites, at the time a loose federation of tribes, decided to have a king. Because of the animosity between the larger tribes, they chose a man from the smallest family of the smallest tribe: Saul. The Syrians chose a man from a remote village belonging to a small minority: Assad. He preserved the unity of Syria with great success and brutality. Now they hope that his son, too, will succeed in this task, if by less brutal means..

Syria is torn between a glorious past and a pitiful present. In the past, al-Sham (Greater Syria) was the dominant factor in the Arab world. The dream of a Great Syria influences its policy even today, in spite of the pan-Arab ideology of the ruling Ba'ath party. In Syrian eyes, Lebanon is not abroad, but a part of Syria torn from it by foreign colonial masters. The same goes for Palestine - and therefore Assad never forgave Arafat, who had the impertinence of refusing Syrian guardianship and orders. All Palestinian leaders, including Arafat, have seen Syrian prisons from the inside.

Unlike divided Syria, which - after years of political anarchy preferred a unifying dictatorship, divided Lebanon always hovers on the brink of civil war. Except some unrealistic intellectuals, all Lebanese know that if the Syrian army would leave Lebanon, the traditional mutual massacre would start all over again. Therefore, Lebanon will remain a Syrian protektorat.

One of our blubbering politicians, beloved by television, said that if Barak had made peace with Assad, the agreement would now have been torn to pieces. That is utter nonsense. Mubarrak upholds the peace of Sadat, Abdallah upholds the peace of Hussein, Muhammad of Morocco upholds the relationship created by his father Hassan. If Assad Sr. had signed a peace agreement, it would have been easy for Assad Jr. to implement it. Now this will be difficult to achieve. Because of the grotesque quarrel about ten meters on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, a historic opportunity has been missed - much to the delight of the Golan settlers.

The competition between Assad and Arafat, strong opponents of equal age, has now come to an end, and likewise the competition between the "Syrian track" and the "Palestinian track". Arafat has been freed from the threat of the "refusal organizations", some of them terrorist, who were used by Assad in order to prevent Arafat from making peace before him. Arafat can act now for purely Palestinian interests. This is an opportunity for Barak to make an honorable peace with the Palestinians. If he persists in his efforts to dictate impossible terms, he will miss this one, too.

Please remember: After the death of the Lion of Damascus, Yasser Arafat is now the senior statesman in the Arab world and the whole region. He was already a leader of world-wide standing when Bashar al-Assad was born. His word will carry now additional weight in all Arab councils.