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Syria
February 2013/Adar 5773
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not to destabilize the region further by transferring weapons to Hezbollah. Turkish Skeptics The one country that did not seem to buy the version of the story being told by Syria and Iran was Turkey, where Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu criticized the Syrian government for failing to respond to the alleged attack by Israel inside the country. Turkey, whose NATO partners recently deployed US-made Patriot missiles along its border with Syria for protection, and Mr. Assad have been at odds politically and religiously. Turkey is mostly Sunni, like the rebels. “Why has the Syrian army, which has been attacking its own people with warplanes and tanks for 22 months, not responded to this Israeli operation? Why doesn’t Assad throw a stone at the Israeli planes when they fly over his palace and insult his nation’s honor? Why doesn’t he do anything against Israel while he drops bombs on the innocent people of his own country? Is there a secret agreement between Israel and Assad?” said Mr. Davutoglu. He suggested the Israeli air strikes might serve the interests of the Syrian government, implying that Mr. Assad is “exploiting” the attack “to bolster support for his regime among Muslim countries.”
Perhaps shaken by Turkey’s sentiments, Mr. Assad went on the offensive, declaring that Israel’s purpose in attacking Syria was not self-defense, but “an attempt to shake the stability of Syria.” Mr. Assad stuck to his story that Israel had blown up a “sensitive Syrian military installation” rather than the convoy of advanced weapons being transferred from Syria to Hezbollah. “Proof” By Sunday, February 3, Israel began issuing oblique hints about the incident. At a conference in Germany, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told international diplomats and military officials that the strike (whether against the convoy or the facility) is “proof that when we say something we mean it.” “We say we don’t think Syria should be allowed to bring advanced weapon systems into Lebanon,” he said. The same day, Israeli Maj-Gen (res) Amos Yadlin, former head of Military Intelligence, explained what he thought actually happened in Syria and why Mr. Assad gave a false version of it. According to Mr. Yadlin, the true story was published by McClatchy News, which had quoted “two Israeli intelligence officials familiar with the air assault.”
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Israel’s MO The two told McClatchy that the anti-aircraft missiles targeted by the Israeli airstrike “were on a military base outside Damascus and had yet to reach the highway that leads to Lebanon when they were destroyed.” One of the officials told the news service that “waiting until the missiles had reached the highway, the main link between Syria’s capital and Lebanon’s Beirut, would have made it more difficult for Israeli aircraft to target them without risking civilian casualties.” Mr. Yadlin said the operation as described fit Israel’s policy of preventive strikes. Mr. Yadlin was one of Israel’s eight F-16 pilots who led the raid against Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, Iraq, in 1981. He suggested the reason the Syrians emphasized the story of the facility and not the SA-17 convoy was that Syria had promised Russia that the SA-17s, which are an advanced Russian weapons system, would remain in Syria and not be transferred to Hezbollah. “By dispatching the convoy, Syria was about to violate this commitment, and it, therefore, did not want to admit the convoy’s existence,” he said. Civil War Israel’s incident last month occurred against the backdrop of the civil war that has been raging since March 2011 in Syria. More than 60,000 men, women, and children have died, and, according to the UN, another 2.5 million are literally starving in the devastation. The violence was triggered by a teenager’s scrawled bit of graffiti on a wall celebrating the so-called Arab spring which had swept the region. Government forces arrested the boy and tortured him, igniting protests which the government tried to suppress. At the end of January, the watchdog organization Human Rights Watch said the burning and looting of religious sites belonging to the groups at war with one another (as well as those belonging to helpless minority groups) has intensified, making it impossible for Western nations to offer assistance to Syrians caught in the crossfire. In an interview with the New Republic, Mr. Obama described his dilemma: “Would