Syria and Lebanon

Itamar Rabinovich is the Dina and Yona Ettinger Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University. His most recent books are The War for Lebanon, 1970–1985 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985) and, with Michael Fry, Despatches from Damascus (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1986, and Los Angeles: School of International Relations, University of Southern California, 1986). He wrote this essay while he was a fellow in the International Security Studies Program at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.