| New York Times | - |
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Tensions over the Israeli airstrike on Syrian territory appeared to increase on Thursday as Syria
delivered a letter to the United Nations declaring its right to
self-defense and Israel's action was condemned not only by longstanding ...
Syria Says It Has Right to Counterattack Israel
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A post office worker showed an
Israeli child how to wear a gas mask on Thursday at a mall in the
Pisgat Ze’ev area of East Jerusalem. More Photos »
By ANNE BARNARD and JODI RUDOREN
Published: January 31, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Tensions over the Israeli airstrike on Syrian territory appeared to increase on Thursday as Syria delivered a letter to the United Nations declaring its right to self-defense and Israel’s action was condemned not only by longstanding enemies, including Iran and Hezbollah, but also by Russia.
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The New York Times
Denying reports, Syria said Israeli jets had hit a defense research facility in Jimraya. More Photos »
Israeli officials remained silent about their airstrike in Syrian territory
on Wednesday, a tactic that experts said was part of a longstanding
strategy to give targeted countries face-saving opportunities to avoid
worsening a conflict. But Syria’s own confirmation of the attack may have undercut that effort.
“From the moment they chose to say Israel did something, it means
someone has to do something after that,” said Giora Eiland, a former
national security adviser in Israel and a longtime military leader. But
other analysts said that Syria’s overtaxed military was unlikely to
retaliate and risk an Israeli onslaught that could tip the balance in
its fight against the 22-month Syrian uprising. They also said Syria’s
ally Hezbollah was loath to provoke conflict with Israel as it sought to
maintain domestic calm in neighboring Lebanon.
Syria’s ambassador to Lebanon declared that Syria had “the option and
the capacity to surprise in retaliation.” The Iranian deputy foreign
minister warned that the attack would have “grave consequences for Tel
Aviv,” while the Russian Foreign Ministry said the strike “blatantly
violates the United Nations Charter and is unacceptable and unjustified,
whatever its motives.” Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the
attack — as did some Syrian rebels, seeking to deny President Bashar al-Assad of Syria a chance to rally support as a victim of Israel.
Many questions swirled about the target, motivations and repercussions
of the Israeli attack, which Arab and Israeli analysts said demonstrated
the rapid changes in the region’s strategic picture as Mr. Assad’s
government weakens — including the possibility that Hezbollah, Syria or
both were moving arms to Lebanon, believing they would be more secure
there than with Syria’s beleaguered military, which faces intense
attacks by rebels on major weapons installations.
American officials said Israel hit a convoy before dawn on Wednesday
that was ferrying sophisticated SA-17 antiaircraft missiles to Lebanon.
The Syrians and their allies said the target was a research facility in
the Damascus suburb of Jamraya.
It remained unclear Thursday whether there was one strike or two. Also
unclear was the research outpost’s possible role in weapons production
or storage for Syria or Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite
organization that has long battled with Israel and plays a leading role
in the Lebanese government.
The Jamraya facility, several miles west of Damascus, produces both
conventional and chemical weapons, said Maj. Gen. Adnan Salo, a former
head of the chemical weapons unit in the Syrian Army who defected and is
now in Turkey.
Hezbollah indirectly confirmed its military function in condemning the
attack on Arab and Muslim “military and technological capabilities.”
That raised the possibility that Israel targeted weapons manufacturing
or development, in an attack reminiscent of its 2007 assault on a Syrian
nuclear reactor, a strike Israeli never acknowledged.
But military analysts said that the Israeli jets’ flight pattern
strongly suggested a moving target, possibly a convoy near the center,
and that the Syrian government might have claimed the center was a
target to garner sympathy. Hitting a convoy made more sense, they said,
particularly if Israel believed that Hezbollah stood to acquire
“game-changing” arms, including antiaircraft weapons. Israeli leaders
declared days before the strike that any transfer of Syria’s extensive
cache of sophisticated conventional or chemical weapons was a “red line” that would prompt action.
Hezbollah — backed by Syria and Iran — wants to upgrade its arsenal in
hopes of changing the parameters for any future engagement with the
powerful Israeli military, and Israel is determined to stop it. And
Hezbollah is perhaps even more anxious to gird itself for future
challenges to its primacy in Lebanon, especially if a Sunni-led
revolution triumphs next door in Syria.
But if weapons were targeted, analysts said, it is not even clear that
they belonged to Hezbollah. Arab and Israeli analysts said another
possibility was that Syria was simply aiming to move some weapons to
Lebanon for safekeeping. While there are risks for Hezbollah that
accepting them could draw an Israeli attack, said Emile Hokayem, a
Bahrain-based analyst at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies, there is also an upside: “If Assad goes down, they have the
arms.”
Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese general and professor at the American
University of Beirut, said that SA-17s made little sense for Hezbollah
because they require large launching systems that use radar and would be
easy targets for Israel. Syria, he said, needs SA-17s in case of
international intervention in its civil war.
Those suggestions comported with the account of a Syrian officer who
said in a recent interview that the heavily guarded military area around
the Jamraya research facility was used as a weapons transfer station to
southern Lebanon and Syria’s coastal government stronghold of Tartous
for safekeeping, in convoys of tractor-trailer trucks. (The officer said
he had lost faith in the government but hesitated to defect because he
did not trust the rebels.)
The attack on Wednesday, in all its uncertainty, pointed to the larger
changes afoot in the region. Hezbollah may be looking at a future where
it is without Syria’s backing and has to defend itself against Sunnis
resentful of its role in the Syrian conflict. And Israel may find that
its most dangerous foe is not Hezbollah but jihadist Syrian rebel groups
that are fragmented and difficult to deter.
If Syria’s weapons end up with jihadist groups like Al Qaeda or its
proxies, that would be a global threat, said Boaz Ganor, executive
director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. “If one organization will
put their hands on this arsenal, then it will change hands in no time
and we’ll see it all over the world,” he said.
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