Hashim al-Atassi (Arabic: هاشم الأتاسي, romanized: Hāšim al-ʾAtāsī; 11 January 1875 – 5 December 1960) was a Syrian politician and statesman who served as the President of Syria on three occasions from 1936 to 1939, 1949 to 1951 and 1954 to 1955.

[2] He began his political career in 1888 in the Ottoman vilayet of Beirut, and through the years, up to 1918, served as Governor of Homs, Hama, Baalbek, Anatolia, and Jaffa, which included the then-small suburb of Tel Aviv.

He became prime minister during this short-lived period, for French occupation soon followed under the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and a League of Nations Mandate (Also see: San Remo conference).

During his tenure, Atassi appointed the veteran independence activist and statesman Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, one of the leaders of the Syrian nationalist movement against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, as Foreign Minister.

Shahbandar's efforts to compromise with Gouraud proved futile, and Atassi's cabinet was dissolved on 24 July 1920, when the French defeated the Syrian Army at the Battle of Maysalun and imposed their mandate over Syria.

[citation needed] After the dissolution of the Kingdom by the French, Atassi met with a group of notables in October 1927 and founded the National Bloc, which was to lead the Syrian nationalist movement in Syria for the next twenty years.

The Bloc mobilized massive street-wide support for Atassi's call, and most shops and enterprises closed down and riots raged daily, crippling the economy and embarrassing Abid before the international community.

In defeat, the French government agreed to recognize the National Bloc leaders as the sole representatives of the Syrian people and invited Hashim al-Atassi for diplomatic talks in Paris.

However, by the end of 1938 it became clear that the French government had no intention of ratifying the treaty, partly due to fears that if it relinquished its colonies in the Middle East, it would be outflanked in a war with Nazi Germany that was brewing in Europe.

He visited Hashim al-Atassi in Homs and invited him to resume the presidency, assuring the veteran leader that France wanted to turn a new page in her relations with Syria.

Following this development, leading politicians called on the aging Atassi to create a provisional government that would supervise national elections and the restoration of civilian rule.

Atassi received senior Iraqi leaders in Damascus, including Crown Prince Abd al-Illah and Faisal II of Iraq, for technical discussions on union.

In response, Shishakli arrested Atassi's Chief of Staff Sami al-Hinnawi, a People's Party sympathizer, and several pro-Iraqi officers in the Syrian Army.

In what remained of his term, the 80-year-old president tried to curb the influence of military officers and worked relentlessly against the leftist current that was brewing in Syria, characterized by socialist ideology, sympathies for the Soviet Union, and blind adherence to the policies of the socialist leader of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser who were supported by members of the president's own powerful clan, such as Jamal al-Atassi and Nureddin al-Atassi.

The Syrian President cracked down on Nasserite elements and clashed with his own pro-Nasser Prime Minister Sabri al-Asali, accusing him of wanting to transform Syria into an Egyptian satellite.

In 1955, the President was tempted to accept the Baghdad Pact, an Anglo-American agreement aimed at containing Communism in the region, but Nasserite elements in the Syrian Army prevented him from doing so.

He rallied in support of Hashemite Iraq, whose leaders were competing with Nasser over pan-Arab leadership, and was allied to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa'id.

He was given a state funeral, which was the largest in the history of the city, attended by senior members of the United Arab Republic (UAR) government of President Nasser.