By Countercurrents.org
30 January, 2013
@ Countercurrents.org
Israel has hit Syria.
Citing a Western diplomat and regional security sources a London datelined Reuters report [1] said on January 30, 2013:
Israeli forces attacked a convoy on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight.
Earlier, Israel expressed concern over the fate of Syrian chemical and advanced conventional weapons.
The sources, four in total, all of whom declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, had no further information about what the vehicles may have been carrying, what forces were used or where precisely the attack happened.
In the run-up to the raid, Israeli officials have been warning very publicly of a threat of high-tech anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles reaching Israel’s enemies in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah from Syria. They have also echoed U.S. concerns about Syria’s presumed chemical weapons arsenal.
The Lebanese army reported a heavy presence of Israeli jets over its territory throughout the night.
“There was definitely a hit in the border area,” one security source said. A Western diplomat in the region who asked about the strike said “something has happened”, without elaborating.
An activist in Syria who works with a network of opposition groups around the country said that she had heard of a strike in southern Syria from her colleagues but could not confirm it. A strike just inside Lebanon would appear a less diplomatically explosive option for Israel to avoid provoking Syrian ally Iran.
Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said on Sunday that any sign that Syria’s grip on its chemical weapons was slipping, as President Bashar al-Assad fights rebels trying to overthrow him, could trigger Israeli intervention.
Israeli sources said on Tuesday that Syria’s advanced conventional weapons would represent as much of a threat to Israel as its chemical arms should they fall into the hands of Islamist rebels or Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon.
Interviewed on January 30, 2013, Shalom would not be drawn on whether Israel was operating on its northern front, instead describing the country as part of an international coalition seeking to stop spillover from Syria’s two-year-old insurgency.
“The entire world has said more than once that it takes developments in Syria very seriously, developments which can be in negative directions,” he told Israel Radio, recalling that President Barack Obama has warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of U.S. action if his forces use chemical weapons.
“The world, led by President Obama who has said this more than once, is taking all possibilities into account,” Shalom added. “And of course any development which is a development in a negative direction would be something that needs stopping and prevention.”
Border Strike
Whether the strike took place within Syrian territory, or over the border in Lebanon, could affect any escalation from the incident. Iran, Israel’s arch-foe and one of Damascus’s few allies, said on Saturday it would consider any attack on Syria as an attack on itself. During and since Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, there have been unconfirmed reports of Israeli strikes on convoys just after they entered Lebanon from Syria.
Israel has long made clear it claims a right to act preemptively against enemy capabilities.
Alluding to this, air force chief Major-General Amir Eshel on Tuesday said his corps was involved in a covert and far-flung “campaign between wars”.
“This campaign is 24/7, 365 days a year,” Eshel told an international conference. “We are taking action to reduce the immediate threats, to create better conditions in which we will be able to win the wars, when they happen.”
He did not elaborate on any operations, but did single out the threat Israel saw from Syria’s arsenal, calling it “huge, part of it state-of-the-art, part of it unconventional”.
Israeli jets regularly enter Lebanese airspace, but its forces have been more discreet about Syrian incursions.
Israel’s bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, though revealed by then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, is still not formally acknowledged by the Israelis.
According to Bush, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought to keep the matter quiet so as to reduce the risk of Assad feeling public pressure to retaliate. Syria and Israel are technically at war but have not exchanged fire in a significant way in decades.
Israeli media reported this week that the country’s national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, was sent to Russia and its military intelligence chief Major-General Aviv Kochavi to the United States for consultations.
Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London said that there are indications that Hezbollah is training near chemical weapons sites in Syria, with which the Shi’ite Lebanese militia has historically had a strong alliance.
“We also know that (Syria’s) use of tactical ballistic missiles has been escalating – presumably as air power becomes harder to use in contested areas, and rebels seize larger targets like bases that are amenable to missile attack,” he said.
Worries about Syria and Hezbollah have sent Israelis lining up for government-issued gas masks. According to the Israel post office, which is handling distribution of the kits, demand roughly trebled this week.
“It looks like every kind of discourse on this or that security matter contributes to public vigilance,” its deputy director Haim Azaki told Israel’s Army Radio. “We have really seen a very significant jump in demand.”
Israeli warplane ‘struck target on Syria-Lebanon border’ amid weapons fears
Harriet Sherwood reported [2] from Jerusalem:
Israeli warplanes have attacked a target on the Syrian-Lebanese border, according to unconfirmed reports.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had no comment on the report.
The report followed claims in the Lebanese media that IDF fighter planes had flown sorties over Lebanon’s airspace from January 29, 2013 afternoon until January 30, 2013 morning.
A Lebanese army statement, quoted by local news agencies, said: “Four Israeli planes entered Lebanese airspace at 4.30pm on Tuesday. They were replaced four hours later by another group of planes, which overflew southern Lebanon until 2am, and a third mission took over, finally leaving at 7.55am on Wednesday morning.” The IDF also declined to comment on these reports.
It was also reported that the IDF’s intelligence chief, Major-General Aiv Kochavi, arrived in Washington on Tuesday for private talks with the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Martin Dempsey, at the Pentagon.
Hezbollah is also believed to have extensive stockpiles of conventional weapons in warehouses inside Syria. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nazrallah, “wants to remove everything from Syrian soil to Lebanon”, said Amnon Sofrin, a former head of intelligence in the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Israel, he added, was “looking very carefully at convoys heading from Syria to Lebanon”.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was reported earlier this week to be conducting intense security consultations on the possible response to the movement of weapons.
The deputy prime minister, Silvan Shalom, told Army Radio on Sunday: “If there is a need, we will take action to prevent chemical weapons from being transferred to Islamic terror organizations. We are obligated to keep our eye on it at all times, in the event chemical weapons fall into Hezbollah’s hands.”
Israel’s concern over the civil war in Syria has mounted over recent months as Bashar al-Assad’s regime has come closer to collapse and fighting has bordered on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Although Israel has been technically at war with Syria since 1967, the Golan Heights has been mostly quiet since Israel occupied it almost 46 years ago.
But Israel fears that the implosion of the Assad regime could herald an Islamist Syria, which could seek to reignite hostilities with its neighbor.
Alex Fishman, defense analyst for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote earlier this week: “In the light of Assad’s increasingly unsteady status, Hezbollah figures have understood that [its stockpiles of conventional] weapons cannot remain there. And as soon as these weapons reach Lebanon, they are swallowed up in secret underground stockpiles. Looking for them will be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
“If chemical weapons are brought into Lebanon, Israel will probably not hesitate – and will attack.”
According to Sofrin, the Israeli military would be more inclined to deploy “specialist skilled units” on the ground to secure depots of chemical weapons, rather than use air strikes, which risked dispersing chemicals over a wide area. But any such operation would be complicated and risky, he added.
Israel’s primary concern was to prevent Hezbollah acquiring chemical warheads that it could mount on existing missiles, he said.
Netanyahu told Sunday’s cabinet meeting Syria was “increasingly coming apart”. He added: “The reality is developing apace. In the east, north and south, everything is in ferment, and we must be prepared: strong and determined in the face of all possible developments.”
Source:
[1] “Israel hits target in Syria border area: sources” http://news.yahoo.com/israel-hits-target-syria-border-area-sources-113955592.html
[2] guardian.co.uk, Jan 30, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/30/israeli-warplane-syria-lebanon-border