"The Syrians keep their commitments," Yitzhak Rabin once flatly declared, and Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres both have concurred. ("With the Syrians," Peres put it, "it is very hard to reach an agreement, but the agreement will stand.") Barak has said that Asad consistently lives up to his word. Nor is this view confined to politicians: Uri Sagi, a past head of Israeli military intelligence, has asserted that "if and when [Asad] signs an agreement, he will keep his word."
The same point is made regularly in both the Israeli and American press. Yoel Marcus, a columnist for Ha'aretz, writes that "an accord with Asad is enshrined in concrete and steel," while to the editors of the New York Times, the Asad regime "has compiled a record of abiding by agreements it does sign." Lest anyone still be in doubt, Asad himself has vouched for his own record: "We always mean what we say and we fulfill our promises."
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A wide consensus exists that, for 25 years, Asad has fulfilled the promises he gave in the May 1974 Separation of Forces agreement with Israel. Richard Murphy, a former American assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, attests that the pact has been "scrupulously observed." Ze'ev Schiff, the dean of Israeli military correspondents, writes that "violations have been negligible," and even Benjamin Netanyahu declared in 1994 that "Syria has kept to both the letter and the spirit of its disengagement agreement."
It is indeed true that Asad has prevented violence across the Syrian-Israeli border, thereby making the Golan not just a quiet place but perhaps the safest in the Middle East.
The Word of Hafez al-Assad
Do I need to make cue cards for you on this one? 
