A senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was
considering further military strikes on Syria to stop the transfer of
advanced weapons to Islamic militants, and he warned the Syrian
president, Bashar al-Assad, that his government would face crippling
consequences if it retaliated against Israel.
Wednesday 15 May 2013
Israel Hints at New Strikes, Warning Syria Not to Hit Back
The Israeli official said: “Israel is determined to continue to prevent
the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah. The transfer of such
weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region.”
“If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to
strike Israel through his terrorist proxies,” the official said, “he
will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.”
The Israeli official, who has been briefed by high-level officials on
the Syria situation in the past two days, declined to be identified,
citing the need to protect internal Israeli deliberations. He contacted
The New York Times on Wednesday.
The precise motives for Israel’s warning were uncertain: Israel could be
trying to restrain Syria’s behavior without undertaking further
military action, or alerting other countries to another strike. That
would ratchet up the tension in an already fraught situation in Syria,
where a civil war has been raging for more than two years.
Nearly two weeks ago, Israeli warplanes carried out two strikes, the
first hitting bases of the elite Republican Guard and storehouses of
long-range missiles, in addition to a military research center that
American officials have called the country’s main chemical weapons site.
A more limited strike on May 3 at Damascus International Airport was
also meant to destroy weapons being sent from Iran to the Islamic
militant group Hezbollah. The Israeli government did not confirm either
of the attacks, which followed one earlier this year.
The Syrian government publicly condemned Israel for the assaults, saying
it “opened the door to all possibilities.” The Syrian deputy foreign
minister, Faisal Mekdad, declared in an interview with Agence
France-Presse, “We will respond immediately and harshly to any
additional attack by Israel.” He described the Israeli strikes as a
“declaration of war.”
Mr. Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, have both said
in recent days that the Israeli-Syrian border, which has been relatively
quiet despite the more than two years of civil war inside Syria, could
become a “resistance front,” in response to Israeli aggression.
On Wednesday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that several mortar
shells, fired from across the Syrian border, had landed in the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The newspaper attributed the information
to an official with the Israel Defense Forces.
The shells landed on Mount Hermon, in the Israeli-controlled Golan
Heights, around 6 a.m. Wednesday. The rockets were the latest in a
series of what Israel has generally considered errant fire from internal
Syrian fighting across the armistice line that landed in its territory,
and did not cause any injuries or damage. Israel did not fire back on
Wednesday, as it has on several previous occasions, but the incident did
cause the closing of Mount Hermon, a popular tourist site, to the
public for several hours, during a Jewish holiday in which hiking in the
Golan is popular.
In his comments, the Israeli official noted that “Israel has so far
refrained from intervening in Syria’s civil war and will maintain this
policy as long as Assad refrains from attacking Israel directly or
indirectly.”
“Israel,” he said, “will continue its policy of interdicting attempts to
strengthen Hezbollah, but will not intercede in the Syrian civil war as
long as Assad desists from direct or indirect attacks against Israel.”
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declined
to discuss the meaning of the Israeli official’s statement. “We’re not
going to comment on the story,” he said.
American and Israeli political analysts agree that Israel has little
motive to intervene in Syria’s civil war, but is deeply concerned about
the transfer of advanced weapons, as well as the danger that Mr. Assad’s
stockpiles of chemical weapons could be used against Israel.
Posted @ 17:16
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