Israël déconcerté par la guerre en Syrie - Choosing Not To Choos

As the Syrian conflict continues—a third of the population are now refugees—concern is growing in Israel, which is torn between hostility to the Assad regime and fear of jihadist groups taking over close to its borders, write Nir Boms and Asaf Hazani.

Israelis have used a variety of terms to describe the past few years’ events in the Arab world, reflecting how different actors have perceived the changes. What began as an “Arab spring” grew into a dangerous “radical Islamic winter”; and as Israel’s leaders remained unable to define the nature of the transformations, it became a “Middle East upheaval.” Gradually the tendency to swing between optimism and pessimism turned into profound puzzlement.

Impressed by the domino effect of the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia, Israelis initially saw the wave of protests as a fascinating sociological experiment taking place “over there,” far from its own borders. The country continued to think of itself as separate, a unique case in the Middle East or, as former Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak (2007-13) put it, “a villa in the jungle.” Even the “tent protests” that broke out in the summer of 2011 were seen as an expression of bourgeois discontent, a summer adventure related more to events in the United States and Europe (the Occupy movement, the Indignados) than to the regional turbulence.

Israel initially chose to remain aloof. And although the Arab Spring made Israeli headlines, major developments in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bahrain went unremarked upon since they were not seen as directly affecting national security.

But as the effects of the regional upheavals began to make themselves felt, the Israeli leadership was forced to accept that the Arab revolts could affect national interests. It began to grow concerned when weapons held by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya before 2011 started to reach terrorist elements operating near Israel’s borders. Terrorist activity that began in the Sinai peninsula after the fall of Hosni Mubarak at the start of 2011, intensified with the ousting of Mohammed Morsi in summer 2013. The successive Egyptian presidents, struggling to maintain a semblance of stability in Sinai, faced increasing challenges to their authority. Israel, which had signed a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979, was in a quandary. Should it respond to the terrorist activities, or admonish Egypt for its incompetence? Both options were risky. A third option was to agree to review the military appendix to the peace agreement, allowing Egypt to reinforce its troops in the Sinai—a crucial choice that would mean sacrificing the present for better future security.

Sinai was not the only challenge. The destabilisation of Jordan, long neglected, created growing concern in Israel. Meanwhile the fighting in Syria began to attract interest from global jihadist organisations, which strengthened their foothold as the country fell into chaos. Israel observed these developments with anxiety, closely monitoring the Palestinian territories, in the hope that the Middle Eastern “cascade” would stop at the Israeli border. The Israeli leadership found itself increasingly troubled by one question: With the rise of so many armed groups, were states still relevant actors? In 2006 Lebanon had been unable to prevent the conflict between Hizbullah and Israel.

In Syria, during the first months of the revolt that began in March 2011, Bashar al-Assad initially sought to frame events as a passing storm, nothing to do with the regional upheavals; he maintained that theFriday protests, limited in time and place, did not amount to a general uprising against his government. Yet very soon Syria was plunged into a bloodbath, and the violence within the country began to affect the entire region. With the arms trafficking that followed the fall of the Libyan regime, the foreign jihadists making their way to Syria continued to grow in number.

The fighting in Syria is now affecting the whole region, and the country’s distress and the waves of refugees it has produced are attracting renewed international attention. The hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have affected those countries’ stability, while Israel, the traditional enemy, has not been called upon to help manage the problem. Indeed, the Palestinians have refused to coordinate with the Israeli government over their own efforts to help the refugees—which suits Israel as it already has enough problems dealing with a high level of labour immigration from Africa.

There are further reasons for Israel’s leadership to take comfort. One is that the Palestinian question has received far less international attention since the beginning of the Arab Spring. Until the eruption of hostilities in Syria, when someone mentioned refugees in the Middle East they meant Palestinians—now they mean Syrians, who form the greatest number of displaced people, either in exile or within Syria itself.

The second reason relates to Israel’s own security—its perpetual and paramount concern. Fears of Syria’s dissolution have changed relations within the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah axis. Previously both Iran and Syria were focused on assisting Hizbullah. Now, even if Israel is still concerned that the Assad regime may put unconventional weapons into Hizbullah’s hands, it sees that Syria has become the main recipient of aid. This is a significant change given that the Israeli establishment has tended to see geopolitical events purely in terms of security and ignore all the changes it judged to have no direct impact on that.

As events unfolded, Israel was glad to watch from the sidelines, believing the Assad regime was headed for collapse. It was also pleased when in 2012 Damascus ended its relationship with (Palestinian) Hamas. As the conflict in Syria grew, many senior Israeli leaders repeated what prime minister Menachem Begin had once said in a different context: “I wish both sides the best of luck.”

Yet Israel does have clear interests in all this. The fall of the Assad regime would serve Israeli interests by destabilising the Iranian-Shia axis. On the other hand, given the weakness of Syria’s secular opposition, victory for the insurgents could bring about an Islamist regime hostile to Israel in its own backyard. Assad is a known quantity—an officially declared enemy, governing from a palace, with whom it is possible to communicate. But the insurgent organisations have no postal address and are so numerous that it’s impossible to fight or negotiate with them as one would with a state (bombing strategic sites or communicating via a third party).

Israel has almost succeeded in not taking sides overtly. And the international diplomatic effort that led to scheduling the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons has relieved some serious Israeli concerns. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) homeland command, in charge of civilian defence, has even halted production of gas masks. Israel has also drawn its own red lines with air strikes against Syrian military targets in order to prevent the transfer of strategic weapons (especially from Syria to Hizbullah) and to counter the threat of the Syrian conflict spilling over into the Golan Heights (Israel has occupied the plateau since 1967 and annexed it in 1981) or into Israel proper. The latest such strikes took place this February and March.

The Golan, which has served as a buffer zone since the 1973 war, no longer fulfils that purpose: UN forces are no longer effective, and there is fighting close to the border. Mortar and artillery shells, machinegun fire and roadside bombs frequently strike Israel and Israeli targets, intentionally or not… Read more.