SPEAKING
FREELY Israel fuels Syrian fire, risks
contagion By Nicola Nasser
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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their say. Please
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The timing of the
Israeli air raid early on January 30 on a Syrian
target that has yet to be identified coincided
with hard-to-refute indications that attempts to
achieve "regime change" in Syria by force, both by
foreign military intervention and by internal
armed rebellion, have failed, driving the Syrian
opposition in exile to opt unwillingly for
"negotiations" with the ruling regime, with the
blessing of the US, EU and Arab League.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
keeps saying that Israel is preparing for
"dramatic changes" in Syria, but senior
Israeli foreign ministry
officials accused him of "fear-mongering on Syria"
to justify his ordering what the Russians
described as the "unprovoked" raid, according to
The Times of Israel.
Another official told
the Israeli Maariv that no Israeli "red lines"
were crossed with regard to the reported chemical
weapons in Syria to justify the raid. On January
16 Israel's National Security Council spokesman
Tommy Vietor said there was "no evidence" of any
Syrian steps to use such weapons. UN Chief Ban
Ki-moon, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, NATO
Chief Fogh Rasmussen and Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov had said during the two months ahead of the
raid that there were "no confirmed reports" or
"anything new," about chemical weapons in Syria.
More likely Israel is either trying to
escalate militarily to embroil an unwilling United
States in the Syrian conflict, in a too-late
attempt to pre-empt a political solution, out of a
belief that the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime
will serve Israel's strategy, according to the
former head of the Military Intelligence
Directorate, Maj-Gen (Res) Amos Yaldin, or to
establish for itself a seat at any international
negotiating table in shaping a future regime in
Syria.
Escalating the military tension
will not secure a seat for Israel in any forum on
Syria. This is the message that Israeli Chief of
General Staff Lt-Gen Benny Gantz should have heard
during his latest five-day visit to the US from
his host in Washington, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey. The head of
Israel's National Security Bureau, Maj Gen (Res)
Ya'akov Amidror, who was in Moscow at the same
time, should have heard a similar message from his
hosts.
The Israeli military intervention
at this particular time fuels a Syrian fire that
has recently started to look for firefighters
among the growing number of the advocates of
dialogue, negotiations and political solutions
both nationally, regionally and internationally.
The escalating humanitarian crisis and the
rising death toll in Syria have made imperative
either one of two options: A foreign military
intervention or a political solution. Two years on
since the US, EU, Turkish and Qatari adoption of a
"regime change" in Syria by force, on the lines of
the "Libyan scenario," the first option has failed
to materialize.
With the legitimate Syrian
government gaining the upper hand militarily on
the ground, the inability of the rebels to
"liberate" even one city, town or enough area in
the countryside to be declared a "buffer zone" or
to host the self-proclaimed leadership of
opposition in exile, the second option of a
political solution is left as the only way out of
the bloodshed and the snowballing humanitarian
crisis.
The Israeli raid sends a message
that the military option could yet be pursued. The
rebels who based their overall strategy on a
foreign military intervention have recently
discovered that the only outside intervention they
were able to get was from the international
network of al-Qaeda and the international
organization of the Muslim Brotherhood. No
surprise then that the frustrated Syrian rebels
are loosing ground, momentum and morale.
An Israeli military intervention would
undoubtedly revive their morale, but temporarily,
because it does not potentially guarantee that it
will succeed in improving their chances where
failure doomed the collective efforts of all the
"Friends of Syria."
Such intervention
would only promise more of the same, prolonging
the military conflict, shedding more of Syrian
blood, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis,
multiplying the numbers of those displaced inside
the country and the Syrian refugees abroad,
postponing an inevitable political solution, and
significantly rallying more Syrians in support of
the ruling regime in defending their country
against the Israeli occupier of their Syrian Golan
heights, thus isolating the rebels by depriving
them from whatever support their terrorist tactics
have left them.
More importantly however,
such an Israeli intervention risks a regional
outburst if not contained by the world community
or if it succeeds in inviting a reciprocal Syrian
retaliation. Both Syrians and Israelis were on
record in the aftermath of the Israeli raid that
the bilateral "rules of engagement" have already
changed.
All the "Friends of Syria" have
been on record that they were doing all they could
to enforce a "buffer zone" inside Syria, but they
failed to make it materialize. They tried to
enforce it by a resolution from the UN Security
Council, but their efforts were aborted three
times by a dual Russian - Chinese veto. They
tried, unsuccessfully so far to enforce it outside
the jurisdiction of the United Nations by arming
an internal rebellion, spearheaded mainly by the
al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front.
Now,
Israel has stepped in the conflict, publicly for
the first time, to try its hand to enforce a
"buffer zone" of its own in an attempt to succeed
where all the "Friends of Syria" have failed.
On February 3, the Sunday Times of London
reported that Israel is considering creating a
buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles (16
kilometers) inside Syria. Israeli mainstream daily
Maariv the next day confirmed the report, adding
the zone would be created in cooperation with
local Arab villages on the Syrian side of the
UN-monitored buffer zone, which was created on
both sides of the armistice line after the 1973
Israeli-Syrian war.
Israel in fact has
been paving the way on the ground for an
Israeli-created buffer zone. In a less publicized
development, Israel allowed the UN-monitored
buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied
Syrian Golan Heights to be overtaken by the
"Islamist" Syrian rebels. The European Jewish
Press reported on January 1, 2013 that Israeli
premier Netanyahu, during a visit to the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, was informed that
the rebels "have taken up positions along the
border with Israel, with the exception of the
Quneitra enclave".
Last November 14,
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted by
the Associated Press confirming that the "Syrian
rebels control almost all the villages near the
frontier with the Israeli-held Golan Heights".
However, on December 13 the Jerusalem Post
quoted a "senior military source" as saying, "The
rebel control of the area does not require changes
on our part."
UN observers monitoring the
zone number about 1,000. An "Israeli officer" told
a Mcclatchy reporter on November 14 that the
rebels in the zone are "fewer than 1,000
fighters". Canada withdrew its contingent of
monitors last September; Japan followed suit in
January. In the previous month, France's
ambassador to the UN, G้rard Araud, warned the UN
peacekeeping force on the Golan may "collapse,"
according to The Times of Israel, which cited the
London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat.
The
1974 armistice agreement prohibits the Syrian
government from engaging in military activity
within the buffer zone; if it does it would risk a
military confrontation with Israel and, according
to Moshe Maoz, professor emeritus at Jerusalem's
Hebrew University, "The Syrian army doesn't have
any interest in provoking Israel."
However, it would be anybody's guess to
know for how long Syria could tolerate turning the
UN-monitored demilitarized buffer zone, with
Israeli closed eyes, into a terrorist safe haven
and into a supply corridor linking the rebels in
Lebanon to their "brethren" in southern Syria.
Israel did not challenge militarily the
presence of the al-Qaeda-linked rebels on its side
of the supposedly demilitarized zone nor did it
complain to or ask the United Nations for a
reinforcement of the UN monitors there.
Ironically, Israel cites the presence of
those same rebels along the borders of the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights as the pretext to
justify "considering creating a buffer zone"
inside Syria.
Nicola Nasser is a
veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West
Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian
territories.
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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