Stakes are the highest for Israel
THE US and its Turkish and Israeli allies are the prime movers in what has been characterised as the Syrian revolution that brought a stunning end to the 54-year rule of the Assad dynasty. They are the apparent beneficiaries of a process that started with a civil war, which began in 2011 and reached its climax on December 8 when the regime collapsed and the country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, fled to Moscow with his wife and three children.
Assad was the main pillar of the Iran-led “axis of resistance” that posed a major challenge for both Jerusalem and Washington. He was also Russia’s most trusted regional ally and his departure means Moscow is obliged to evacuate its last naval and military strongholds in West Asia.
Turkey, for its part, will finally have a sympathetic regime in charge in Damascus that can help Ankara confront the problems it faces with its Kurdish minorities living along the Syrian border. Even better for Turkey is the prospect of lakhs of Syrian refugees returning home and reducing the economic burden of hosting them that Ankara has been forced to bear for the past over a decade.
The stakes are the highest for Israel where Assad’s downfall has attracted mixed responses, ranging from jubilation to fears about what could emerge in the new Syria. "This is a historic day in the history of the Middle East," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared during a visit to the Syria border. "The Assad regime is a central link in Iran’s Axis of Evil — this regime has fallen." In a bit to take credit for what has happened in Syria, Netanyahu added, "This is a direct result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, the main supporters of the Assad regime. This has created a chain reaction throughout the Middle East of all those who want to be free from this oppressive and tyrannical regime."
In this time of uncertainty, including a power vacuum in Damascus, Israel has taken the initiative by launching a series of pre-emptive military measures. These include deploying army bulldozers, painted in distinctive orange colours, to dig three-metre deep ditches along the Syria border to block militants from attacking the Jewish state that has the most to lose from what unfolds in Damascus.
The nightmarish scenario for Israeli generals, echoed in Washington, is a repeat of last year’s invasion from Gaza when Hamas gunmen used 4-by-4 Toyota pickups to crash through border fences and launch the deadliest attack against Jews since the World War II Holocaust. At least 1,200 Israelis were killed and thousands injured, while 240 were kidnapped and taken as hostages. Currently, 100 hostages still remain in custody.
Israelis, monitoring the progress of Syrian rebels, as they too drove to Damascus in similar four-by-four convoys and backed up by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), are fearful that what happened across the Gaza border last year could be repeated on the northern border with Syria. Digging the trenches — code-named Project New East — is one of the several measures approved by cabinet ministers who have been holding emergency meetings to assess the unfolding crisis in Syria.
In another unprecedented move, thousands of Israeli soldiers have created a 14-km deep buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border, known as Mount Hermon and famous on the Israeli side as a winter ski resort. Israeli media has published pictures of soldiers displaying their national flag with a caption declaring: "Syria’s Mount Hermon has been occupied."
Such is the fear of an escalating conflict along this border that the Israeli cabinet is contemplating ordering the army to expand its presence by capturing yet more Syrian territory. In the past few days, Israeli warplanes have launched endless strikes on Syrian military bunkers, missile bases and strategic military installations that are alleged to host clusters of chemical weapons, first used more than a decade ago to intimidate opponents of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia and Iran, when they demanded the end of his authoritarian rule.
At the time, Assad defied US President Barack Obama by crossing a so-called red line and deploying these chemical weapons with disregard for international law. Obama could have retaliated, but chose not to risk involving the US in the Syrian civil war.
Delight in Assad’s downfall is shared by many Syrian political prisoners rescued from his notorious jails. Horror stories of what they endured have sent shock waves across the region. These include the account of a weeping man who described how he and 54 others were due to be executed last Sunday, but were saved at the last minute when the regime in Damascus collapsed. Another released victim is a middle-aged woman who was jailed as an unmarried teenager and has now emerged as the mother of two children. She has no idea about the identity of the children’s father, or fathers. Some elderly prisoners, long presumed dead by their families, have resurfaced to tell their horror tales.
None of these accounts come as a surprise to Syrian human rights campaigners, who explain how Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad, were among the Arab world’s most ruthless dictators. Although the Assad family’s human rights record has never been of interest to Israel, Tel Aviv has always been fearful of how Syria has played host to multiple terror groups headed by the likes of Nazi fugitive Alois Brunner, an associate of the late Adolph Eichmann, who died in 2001, Germany’s Baader-Meinhof, Carlos the Jackal, and members of the Japanese Red Army. They also include Benazir Bhutto’s late brother and founder of Al-Zulfikar, Murtaza Bhutto, famous for swaggering around Damascus hotels in his red-and-gold suits and pearl-handled revolver.
More recently, Israelis were worried about how Assad allowed himself to be used as a proxy for Iran’s endless war against Israel. Iranian military experts were allowed to enter Syria with Assad’s personal blessings, bringing with them the expertise to manufacture chemical explosives, drones and long-range missiles aimed at destroying the Jewish state. Assad also allowed his country to be used as safe passage for Iranian weapons to frontline Hezbollah fighters in the Lebanon. These weapons were repeatedly used during 14 months of the separate Israel-Hezbollah war that ended last month with a US-brokered ceasefire.
Sceptics wary about the post-Assad regime invoke comparisons with what happened in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan when the dictatorial regimes brought down with the help of the West degenerated into feuding Islamic theocracies.
