Beersheba to Hebron to Damascus to New York

Thursday, September 02, 2004

But does that mean Israel is about to launch anything more than rhetorical attacks on Syria? It’s never wise to gamble on what might yet happen in the Middle East, but while the sudden flurry of rhetorical attacks on Damascus are tied to Hezbollah and Hamas-Damascus influence on the terror levels in the West Bank and Israel, the warnings can also be viewed from a much broader context, starting with New York – and for two reasons: the Republican convention and the UN Security Council.

While the Israel-Palestinian dispute has barely been mentioned (most notably by former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and then only in the context of an attack on John Kerry’s changed position on the separation fence) the war on terror is the top of the Republican agenda. Nobody in top levels of the Bush administration is going to take exception to stepped-up Israeli rhetoric against Syria.

Woman Crucified # 13 by Silvia Rosenberg, mixed media on recycled paper, 20x30 cm.

o less significant is an anticipated vote in the UN Security Council on a U.S.-French resolution warning Beirut and Damascus of unspecified ‘additional measures’ against them if they do not take steps towards Lebanon's sovereignty, meaning Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon and stop pulling the strings in the Beirut government. Not that the Israeli government has suddenly taken an interest in promoting democracy in Lebanon – but an added measure of Israeli evidence about Syrian backing for Hezbollah and Hamas terror, delivered through the Europeans, can’t hurt. The UN resolution was drafted after Lebanon bowed to Syrian demands to amend the Lebanese constitution to enable President Emile Lahoud to stay in power for another three years – thus averting elections that might have revealed the depth of anti-Syrian feelings in Lebanon.

Ironically, while the Hezbollah’s stepped up involvement in the financing of armed groups in the West Bank means more sophisticated tactics, it also means it is easier for Israeli intelligence to track that very involvement, both through sophisticated electronic measures as well as the human intelligence gathering mechanisms it presumably has inside, or at least in proximity to Hezbollah inside Lebanon and Syria.

Does all this mean that the Israelis are setting the groundwork for the kind of sortie the Israel Air Force undertook last year against a supposed training camp for Islamic Jihad operatives not far from Damascus, following an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing that killed 19 people in a popular Haifa restaurant? Perhaps, though probably not. Nobody was hurt in that one-time air raid, nor was any real damage incurred on what the Syrians said was a long-abandoned camp. It may have momentarily satisfied Sharon’s urge to ‘send a message’ to Bashar Assad, but if the message was meant to make him cease and desist providing an umbrella for the Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a few other ‘rejectionist’ Palestinian groups, it failed. But a stiffer Israeli message, meaning a more painful air sortie, for example, would likely mean a Syrian proxy response (meaning Hezbollah) on the northern border, which coming so close to the upcoming Jewish New Year holiday week would crush Galilee’s hopes for a busy week catering to tourists, let alone the casualties that might ensue, which in turn would force Israeli retaliation.

In short, the rhetoric is likely to remain just that, words. But who knows, Meir Dagan, the chief of the Mossad, is known for his preference for operations over intelligence gathering as the main function for the spy agency. Mystery explosions in Syria or Lebanon, for example, is not a far fetched scenario, if, as Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said yesterday, ‘those responsible for the terror should not be sleeping peacefully.”

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