Today (Thursday, September 26), I returned to Haifa. The siren on Monday evening startled me and my partner, and we fled to Tel Aviv to a secure shelter with our daughter. Yesterday, on Wednesday, the sirens followed us all the way to Tel Aviv. At 6:30 a.m., our nimble and well-drilled 10-year-old grandson was the first to reach the door to run down the stairs straight to the parking lot across the street, which serves as a shelter. In our house in Haifa, there is no shelter; the staircase is open, there’s no security room, not even a safe interior wall, and through the window facing north, we already witnessed missiles falling on Haifa Bay. This morning, with the first news of a possible ceasefire, we returned home.

For a moment, it seemed that Haifa had returned to itself, although the state of emergency remained in place. There is a reason why the state of emergency persists. While Netanyahu was flying to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York, a statement was issued from his office: “The news of a ceasefire is incorrect. It’s an American – French proposal that the Prime Minister hasn’t even responded to.” Wow, I asked myself, did we return too soon? Is Netanyahu playing games with us? Does he really want to continue the war?

When I examined the text of that American – French proposal, it was clear from the very first line that this proposal leads nowhere, regardless of Bibi’s intentions. The proposal essentially states that ‘the situation between Lebanon and Israel since October 8th, 2023, is intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation. It is time to conclude a diplomatic settlement on the Israel-Lebanon border.’  In this statement, the word ‘Hezbollah’ is conspicuously absent; it does not mention what caused the exchanges of fire, and, most importantly, it does not specify who ‘the other party’, that is, with whom an arrangement must be made. It is worth noting: the exchanges of fire began on October 8 due to a proactive action by a terrorist organization that swore it would not cease fire until Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza, claiming this was in aid of the Gaza Strip.

This is the moment to ask why the United States and France waited an entire year to issue a joint statement for a “diplomatic settlement on the Israel-Lebanon border”? The answer is simple. According to American doctrine, the exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, which have been ongoing for a year, are merely background noise for to the real issue—the war in Gaza. According to both Americans and many Israelis, the way to close the ‘Lebanon chapter’ and return Israel’s displaced northern residents home is to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. In fact, the U.S. has used the Lebanese border exchanges of fire as leverage on Netanyahu’s government to accept the Gaza ceasefire. This created a significant opportunity to accomplish three goals with one ceasefire: achieving quiet on the Lebanon border, securing the release of hostages, and, in the process, removing Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

These two partners for a so-called ceasefire, Hamas and Hezbollah, are classified in the U.S. as terrorist organizations. Their leaders have been indicted for serious crimes against humanity. Both advocate a radical religious ideology. These two organizations have taken control through a sort of military coup in both Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.

A brief reminder: These two partners for achieving a ceasefire, Hamas and Hezbollah, are classified in the U.S. as terrorist organizations. Their leaders have been indicted for serious crimes against humanity. Both advocate a radical religious ideology. They have vowed to eliminate the Zionist entity, and for those who may have forgotten, Hezbollah has also engaged in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians, coming to the aid of the butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad. These two organizations have taken control through a sort of military coup in both Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.

Theoretically, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati represents Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas represents the Palestinian side. In practice, they represent no one. Hamas does not recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, and Mikati represents a state that has disintegrated and is non-functional due to Hezbollah’s total military control over Lebanon.

This has created a stalemate that cannot be resolved through diplomatic means. In spite of launching mass atrocities on October 7, Yahya Sinwar will not relinquish his ambition to continue his control of Gaza and force a complete withdrawal of Israel, as long as Hassan Nasrallah imposes a war of attrition on Israel and holds 80,000 displaced Israelis as hostages. The only way to reach a diplomatic solution in Lebanon is to disconnect Nasrallah from Sinwar. This is the goal of the operation that Israel initiated on Tuesday afternoon with the explosions of beepers in the pockets of Hezbollah operatives. At that moment, a new phase emerged both internationally and within Israel itself.

While there is a deep divide within Israeli society regarding Gaza—between the government and those advocating for a ceasefire at any cost in exchange for the return of hostages—there is a unanimous  consensus regarding Lebanon: the situation along the Lebanon border must change once and for all. The reason for this consensus is simple—Israel has no territorial or other claims in Lebanon, and the goal of the operation is not to eliminate Hezbollah or harm Lebanon, but to achieve an arrangement that will ensure the safety of residents in the north. Many also argue that disconnecting Nasrallah from Sinwar will help secure an agreement for the return of hostages. All this comes after a whole year of fruitless negotiations, whether because Sinwar doesn’t want to, Netanyahu doesn’t want to, or neither of them wants to—each can choose an answer based on their political preferences and respond to the million-dollar question of why there has been no deal to date.

In any case, the fate of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, and subsequently Gaza, is not in the hands of Sinwar or Nasrallah, but in the hands of their Iranian patron. The one orchestrating the symphony, which includes the Houthis in Yemen and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq – is Iran. Iran has enjoyed a whole year of watching Palestinians, Lebanese, and Israelis bleed, while engaging in high-level diplomacy with the U.S. to reach some agreement that would lift the crushing sanctions on the Iranian economy.

Thus, a situation has arisen where the whole world watches and pulls its hair out over the ‘genocide in Gaza’ and ‘intentional starvation.’ Israel has become the new villain. Its leaders are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and the state is being judged before the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity.  This is happening while the Iranian regime cold-bloodedly murders every dissident and every woman who reveals even a part of her hair, in blatant violation of human and civil rights for 45 years. The real enemy of Iran is not the State of Israel, but the sons and daughters of the Iranian people who rise up time and again and pay for it with their lives.

But now the celebration is over. The Israeli attack in Lebanon threatens Iranian assets there. The ballistic missiles threatening Tel Aviv are not meant to defend Lebanon but to protect the Iranian regime, which fears an attack on its nuclear facilities. Thus, we have returned to square one. The one who gave the signal and the means to attack Israel on October 7, to kidnap, massacre, plunder, and rape—the one who greenlighted his mercenaries in Lebanon to assist the monster in Gaza—is the same one who is now working to stop the fire. Not out of concern for the Lebanese, and not out of worry for the Palestinians, but out of concern for the survival of his bloodthirsty regime.

Just as I do not know when the next siren will sound, I do not know when there will be a ceasefire. One thing I do know, and most of the public in Israel knows it too, is that all of this should not have happened. The uncompromising war against fundamentalist terror cannot erase the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu enabled this, and he is responsible for the nightmare unfolding around us. The words spoken by bereaved father Elhanan Danino to Benjamin Netanyahu, when he came to comfort him over the death of his son, who was murdered along with five other hostages while held in Hamas tunnels, echoed in every home in Israel: ‘Fifteen years you have been in power, and you have done nothing; you equipped them (Hamas) with tunnels and dollars.’ Netanyahu, along with Israel’s entire security and political establishment, opened the gates to Iran, allowing it to conquer the fortress without a fight.

The regional peace with the worst of the Gulf regimes has turned into a honey trap, creating the illusion that we have solved the puzzle. We managed to make peace with the Arabs without the Palestinians. This illusion shattered forcefully on October 7. Not only have we not achieved peace, but we have also entered the longest and bloody war since 1948. If there is a ceasefire, it will be worth nothing if we do not manage to seal the gate against extremist Islam. This is not only because the unresolved Palestinian issue allows terror to sow destruction and ruin, but because this is the just path to follow—a genuine solution to the Palestinian question based on equality, democracy, and mutual respect.

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“The government is dragging us into war,” cautioned Maj. Gen. (res.) Amiram Levin in Yediot Aharonot (October 22), warning that “any person with eyes in his head must mobilize to end this government’s term before we reach a disaster.” It seems that Levin is asking Israelis to give more than they can. Netanyahu is popular, and apparently those who have “eyes in their heads” are a minority. Further, it is doubtful whether Levin’s eyes were always open. If they were, he might have awakened much earlier when there was still time to prevent the calamity. The Syrian crisis was not born last week.

To be precise, the process leading to war began on September 14, 2013, the day that John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov signed an agreement to dismantle the chemical weapons in Syria. This agreement saved Assad from an American strike that could have led to his overthrow and would have hindered the spread of Iranian influence in Syria. Obama had stated that the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line.” Assad deliberately crossed it with a chemical attack in Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus, where the death toll exceeded 1,300 civilians. But Obama backtracked, Assad survived, and only four years later Netanyahu was forced to declare “We will not allow Iran to establish itself on our northern border.” Netanyahu, like others in Israel, had failed to foresee what would await Israel, and with it, the entire world.

Following the chemical agreement between Kerry and Lavrov, the defense establishment stopped distributing gas masks, and Israel breathed a sigh of relief. The deal looked very good to Israel, but it was very bad for the Syrian people. But who cared? Everyone was satisfied: Obama sidestepped a potentially unpopular military intervention in Syria, Russia saved its ally, and Israel benefited twofold: the strategic threat of chemical weapons was eliminated, and the civil war could be expected to continue indefinitely. A war in which Syria and the Arab world are smashed to smithereens is viewed by Netanyahu as a strategic plus. The government’s official position was: “We will not interfere in the Syrian civil war.” After all, why intervene when the Syrians are doing such a good job? Worse still, in December 2016, apparently under Russian pressure, Netanyahu even instructed Israel’s UN delegation to abstain from a vote to investigate crimes against humanity committed in Syria.

However, the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Agreement that saved Assad triggered two events that played into Iranian hands. The deal between the United States and Russia did avert an American attack on Syria at the last minute, but it also put an end to expectations that the West would deliver Syrian citizens from a terrible massacre. It allowed the Assad regime to slaughter its own people by barrel-bombing helpless civilians. Desperation caused the Syrian democratic opposition to retreat, which helped ISIS. Millions of Syrian refugees fled to Europe, and in response to right-wing and xenophobic pressure there, the British prime minister resigned following his defeat in the Brexit vote. A few months later, Clinton lost to Trump.

The agreement banning Syria’s chemical weapons had two further ramifications: it gave Russia total guardianship over Syria and it paved the way for the nuclear deal with Iran. Thus Netanyahu’s troubles began. He left no stone unturned to block the deal with Iran, including a pathos-filled speech before the US Congress, but he failed. Obama was resolved to pivot away from the Middle East, and for that reason, Netanyahu had no choice but to reach an understanding with the Russians. Then came Trump. Despite his harsh statements against Iran and the nuclear deal, he failed to take firm action, even cooperating with Iran in the war against ISIS in Mosul. Most recently, the US turned its back on the Kurds when the Iraqi army, along with militias funded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, took control of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, expelling the Kurdish Peshmerga troops from the city.

Moreover, the Israeli government chose to remain silent when Putin decided to commit the entire weight of his army to save Assad’s regime in September 2015. The Russian Air Force completely demolished Aleppo, bombed hospitals, markets and schools in order to crush the anti-Assad rebels. While Russian planes did the job from the air, the Shiite militias and Hezbollah put boots on the ground and occupied the area, killing indiscriminately. For some time, Iran has been a partner of the United States in Iraq and, at the same time, a collaborator with Russia in Syria. The Americans have become accustomed to Russian war crimes in Syria.

When Russian warplanes crushed Aleppo, Netanyahu traveled to Moscow, not to dissuade Putin from committing crimes against humanity, but to arrive at an understanding with the new landlord in Syria. After their meeting, Netanyahu declared, “I have made clear our policy to thwart arms transfers in various ways, as well as Iran’s attempts to establish a second terror front against us. I stated clearly that we would take action against this.” He added, “There was no opposition to this. Whatever Russia’s intention in Syria, he [Russia] will not be part of Iran’s aggressive activity against us.”

Despite all the coordination, declarations, and “understandings” with Putin, Iran has solidified its position in Syria, as well as in Iraq, in accordance with agreements signed with the Russians and Turks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, which I wrote about in an earlier article. Astana is a further step toward the empowerment of the so-called Russian-Iranian-Turkish axis in Syria, with the Damascus region going to Tehran. Iran has invested a great deal of money and soldiers in Syria, and like Russia, it wishes to enjoy the fruits of the victory.

Netanyahu was not invited to Astana, and his American friends had to be satisfied with the status of observer. So all that was left for Netanyahu was to plead with the Russians to consider Israeli interests and not allow a permanent Iranian presence in Syria. But this is unrealistic. Russia’s control of Syria depends on its partnership with Iran. Without Iranian-Shiite militias and Hezbollah, Russia has no hold on the ground. Assad’s army is in shambles, and without Iranian fighters, Assad has no control.

The recent meeting in Damascus between the Syrian and Iranian chiefs of staff was intended to make clear to Israel that the Iranian presence in Syria is not temporary, and that it will continue as long as Assad is in power. Thus what began with Israeli non-intervention in Syria, followed by close coordination with the Russians, has now turned into a policy of growing intervention in an attempt to influence Syria’s future. Those who ignored Assad’s crimes, seeking to benefit from genocide and civil war, are now paying the price of their short-sightedness and evil. And do not, by the way, blame Netanyahu alone. Silence in the face of genocide, and in the face of the biggest refugee tragedy since World War II, enjoyed a wall-to-wall consensus here. In the entire Israeli establishment, coalition and opposition alike, no one can claim to have clean hands.

• Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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As the civil war enters its fifth year, it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain an understanding of the turn of events in Syria: Who is fighting whom and why? Who are the good guys and who are the bad? Before we try to untangle the knot, one thing is clear: Those responsible for the unimaginable killing and destruction are the Assad regime and its allies – Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Only Russia has the air power capable of destroying what still remains intact in Syria, as it did in Chechnya, and only Assad has a quantity of aircraft capable of spewing destruction on such a large scale. Neither ISIL (aka ISIS or DA’ESH) nor the rest of the opposition possess heavy weapons, aircraft, or ground-to-air missiles, leaving them defenseless against air strikes.

Geographically, Syria is split in two: The “populated” area in the West and the “desert” area in the East. Assad abandoned the latter at the very beginning of the war and it ended up in ISIL’s hands. From Daraa in the south, near the border with Jordan, to Aleppo in the north, near the border of Turkey, stretches a road running through the capital Damascus and the cities of Hama and Homs, which remain in the hands of the regime. The war is over the “populated” area, which includes Syria’s most important cities. Assad’s control over this area is precarious, and without massive Russian intervention, his regime would be on the verge of falling.

The great puzzle is not what has prevented the downfall of the Assad regime, but why the United States is silent in the face of unbridled Russian aggression. The realization that Assad has no future in Syria is now an international consensus uniting most leaders, including Putin and Obama. While Iran continues to ally itself to Assad and is prepared to fight to the last Syrian, most reasonable people understand that Assad has lost his legitimacy after displacing 10 million people, almost half Syria’s population. With hundreds of thousands becoming refugees overnight and dozens being killed every day, how can one explain the fact that US Secretary of State John Kerry hasn’t sardonically quipped – as he did when the Israelis shelled Shejaiya in the last Gaza war – “That was a hell of a pinpoint operation!”

Furthermore, why are the Russians and the Americans supporting the YPD Kurdish party? After all, the Kurdish aim is to exploit the Syrian civil war and establish an autonomous Kurdish province called “Rojava” bordering Turkey, like the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq. And how to explain the fact that the same Kurds are fighting beside Assad against the Syrian Opposition Forces and are helping him besiege Aleppo? How does it serve American interests to transplant into Syria a failed sectarian Iraqi model (aiding the Shiites and abandoning the Sunnis)? And how can we talk about war against ISIL when, in fact, Syria is divided along sectarian lines and, as in Iraq, the large Sunni majority is left without hope? But the biggest question is this: In the aftermath of the nuclear agreement with Iran, what does the US want in the Middle East? Does it support a Shiite government in Iraq? Does it favor the removal of Assad and support the Kurdish YPD?

Indeed, diplomacy is the name of the game. John Kerry will keep meeting his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and, between handshakes and smiles, convey a sense of agreement between the great powers. Recently the two held a conference under the dubious title, “Conference of Friends of the Syrian People,” which gathered all the bitter enemies of Syria who are massacring and starving the Syrian population every day. The nuclear deal with Iran and the chemical weapons agreement between Obama and Putin created, say American diplomats, “positive” momentum. So they sit and talk while the Iranians and the Russians terrorize the world.

The latest farce was the convening of the Third Geneva Convention, where Kerry forced the opposition to participate without having discussed the future of Assad. Indeed the desired conference was held and served as a prelude to the murderous Russian assault on Aleppo, which sought to overwhelm the opposition and obviate the need for further negotiations.

The Obama doctrine is simple, if somewhat unreasonable: The civil war in Syria must be resolved on the basis of a compromise between the regime and the opposition. It sounds logical enough, except that Assad does not recognize the opposition, and the opposition will never share power with a regime that has massacred and exiled the Syrian people.

It is clear that Iran continues to prop up the Assad regime, which gives it a power base in Syria and provides vital backing to her protégée, Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is clear that Russia is not ready to forgo its alliance with Syria in favor of the United States. It is also clear that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are determined not to let the Iranians, the Kurds or the Russians decide the fate of Syria. But what about Obama? Since his policy of diplomacy is not working, he makes do with passing out vague tips to the world backed up by zero action: Obama tells the Russians that it’s not worthwhile to continue waging war for economic reasons and warns them against becoming embroiled in the conflict; he warns Assad that even if he conquers Aleppo, most of the country will still remain outside his control; he cautions the Saudis not to get militarily involved in Syria and is preventing them from equipping the opposition with anti-aircraft weapons; he has forbidden the Turks from bombing the Kurdish region or establishing a no-fly zone; and he urges the Europeans to be compassionate and to absorb the millions of refugees knocking on their doors. However, after backing down from his own “red line” in the chemical weapons affair, what he is ready to do remains unclear.

The problem is that the Iranians, Russians, Saudis, and Turks are stubborn enough not to heed the learned advice of the American president. As long as the Russians, Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Kurds tighten their siege on Aleppo, and as long as the Saudis and the Turks threaten to send in ground forces – the Turks to fight against the Kurds and the Saudis against the Iranians – what will the Americans do? And if they do something, how will the Russians react? The situation is complex. Turkey is a member of NATO, and any Russian attack on her will be considered an attack on NATO. Saudi Arabia, for its part, might expand and replicate its war (against Iran in Yemen) in Syria. Thus while Obama shilly-shallies – spewing advice, cooperating with Russia, and accepting mass slaughter – the Middle East slides toward an all-out war that may easily engulf the world.

Some unresolved questions remain, such as, who are the rebels? The rebels are a horde of local militias competing for Saudi and Qatari funding. Since the Americans refuse to support the revolutionaries, including the liberal and democratic opposition, the Saudis and Qatar use oil revenues to “buy” those local militias that share the fundamentalist Saudi ideology. The resulting strength of these fundamentalists gives the Americans a reason to turn their back on the rebels. American inactivity has led to the rise of ISIL, as well as to the Saudi and Qatari intervention in Syria. And now it cooperates with Russia, which fights the very rebels that America nominally supports. Putin is doing Obama’s dirty work.

It is easy to say that Syria has fallen to the bad guys and so the West cannot support any party in the conflict. However, in Syria there are bad guys and then there are very bad guys: The regime is the source of evil there, and its continued existence only increases the power of the extremists. Nonetheless, Syria also has much going for it. While the number of warring militias is not large and their impact is limited, there are still hundreds of thousands of young Syrian democrats who waged the revolution, and without them Syria has no future. They have not disappeared and they continue their activities, whether in Syria or in exile. They are determined to build a modern democratic state living in peace with its neighbors. The good guys are the majority. They work tirelessly to build a civil society. They see the totalitarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, and in Iran and know that there’s not much to learn from them. I met a Syrian refugee in Germany who said, “We chose democracy as in the West, and we expected the West to support us, but when they said, ‘You must decide between Assad or ISIL,’ we refused. We want democracy and we are willing to sacrifice our lives for it.”

• Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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At the outbreak of the revolution in Syria two years ago, the Israeli government announced that events there were none of its business and it would not interfere. Forty years of quiet on the Golan Heights had led Israel to prefer Assad over any conceivable replacement. Now, however, when the rebels rule wide areas, when the Syrian army is falling apart, and when the regime’s survival is in the balance, Israeli policy appears to have shifted from passivity to active intervention.

The pretext is to prevent the transport of Iranian arms through Syria to the Hezbollah, but the real purpose of the policy change is to influence the future of Syria in case Assad falls, as Israel thinks he will; Israel wants to push a future Syria away from its alliance with Iran. The weakness of Assad’s regime, especially its loss of control over areas bordering Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon, has created a new strategic situation. “The free Syrian army” has established a territorial base on which it can erect an alternative administration. This development has led Hezbollah to enter the fray, and that, in turn, has opened the chink through which Israel could worm its way in.

Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria began in secret, with Nasrallah denying it absolutely. But the battles in the city of al-Quseir near Homs, and the ethnic cleansing of the Sunni villages by Hezbollah, have exposed his interference. Hezbollah has lost all its political capital in the Arab world. Indeed, the “guru” of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yussef Kardawi, has gone so far as to damn Nasrallah and call for American intervention. Such a moment, with Assad in free fall and Nasrallah in disgrace, offers Israel a golden opportunity to demonstrate its power and thus ensure deterrence.

Israeli intervention

Israel makes a simple claim: We aren’t attacking the Syrian regime—we’ve gotten along fine with Assad and appreciate the quiet he’s maintained on the Golan. Our problem is with the Hezbollah and the arms from Iran, which threaten our security. However, this claim suffers from several flaws: First, the arms warehouse that Israel blew up was beside Assad’s palace; the fireworks panicked people in Damascus and severely harmed what little is left of Assad’s prestige. Second, what sense does it make to strike in the heart of Damascus—rather than simply wait for Assad’s fall, an event that in any case will cut off Hezbollah’s military lifeline? Instead, Israel chooses the very approach which the US and Europe avoided for fear of chaos.

Assad’s initial reaction has been to preserve the calm with Israel. There were several hours of tension, and then, as a sign that no reprisal was expected, Israeli PM Netanyahu boarded a plane for China. Al-Hayat reports that before the flight he spoke with Russia’s Putin, assuring him that the target was Hezbollah and not Assad. Putin passed the message to Assad, and apparently he also repeated his demand on Hezbollah that it not interfere in Syria (a demand made earlier by his Deputy Foreign Minister in a face-to-face meeting with Nasrallah). Israel emerged unscathed, but with hunger comes appetite, and Assad’s present restraint is no guarantee as to what the response will be the next time.

America on the Defensive

The bombing of Damascus occurred a few days before the visit of the American Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow. After an Israeli intelligence officer revealed that Assad had used chemical weapons, crossing the red line set by President Obama, the White House went on the defensive. Obama acknowledged that such weapons had indeed been used but he claimed a lack of definitive evidence concerning the culprit; in addition, he ruled out putting American soldiers on Syrian soil. To all who demand US military intervention in Syria, above all to Senator John McCain, Obama has always replied that this would be dangerous and complicated.

Kerry’s visit became crucial. On top of 70,000 killed and four million refugees, Hezbollah and Israel have now taken Syria as their battleground. After meeting Putin and holding nighttime discussions with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, Kerry released an innocuous statement that leaves the situation as is: America and Russia have again agreed on the Geneva approach from last June, which calls for talks between the regime and the opposition. Assad’s future remains in dispute: the Americans want him out while the Russians support him.

The Russians and Americans have also said that they will convene an international conference by the end of this month that will bring about negotiations between the opposition and the regime, but no specific time or agenda have been announced. Kerry does not believe that Assad can take part in a transition to democracy after the mass killing of innocent civilians, while Lavrov thinks that an opposition victory would break Syria into ethnic cantons.

And so the routine of horrors goes on. The regime continues with its ethnic cleansing, now in the village of al-Baida and the city of Banias, where the Alawite shabiha slaughtered men, women, and children with knives and the survivors fled.

Internal chaos

The American refusal to provide military aid for the democratic opposition has contributed greatly to the internal chaos. Al-Qaeda-affiliates, though in the minority, are able to set the tone. They unwittingly supply the regime with grist for propaganda, for Assad can argue that he is fighting a joint al-Qaeda–Zionist plot. The fact that the US line is unclear, while Iran and Russia continue to arm the regime, sows confusion within the Syrian opposition.

This state of things is evident in the fact that soon after Moaz al-Khatib was elected to head the National Coalition of the Syrian Opposition Forces, he quit. He had agreed to enter negotiations with the regime, but the latter had responded by rocketing civilians. When the West nonetheless remained unwilling to supply arms, al-Khatib resigned. Until today no replacement has been found.

The world’s hands-off policy has led to general confusion that also affects nearby countries. Iraq is on the verge of civil war between Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the west, and Shiites in the south, while Iran stirs the kettle. Lebanon is split between the supporters and opponents of Assad. The Syrian regime seeks to built an Alawite state, some of the rebels in the north dream of a Sunni emirate, and the democratic opposition gropes in the dark. For fear of the turmoil in Syria, Turkey has smoothed things out with Israel after the troubles of the Marmara affair, while achieving reconciliation with its Kurdish minority.

The Israeli bombardment does not contribute to regional stability, nor even to the security of Israel itself. It is the latest chapter in a lengthy process, which began when Israel stuck its hand into strife-ridden Lebanon in the early 1980’s, supporting the Maronites, an act that would spawn the Hezbollah and years of bloodshed. Syria’s fate lies solely in the hands of its citizens, who have demonstrated their readiness to risk their lives for democracy and social justice. That is the reason why they first went into the streets to demonstrate, and that is the reason they keep on fighting.

A democratic Syria is the historical imperative dictated by the Arab Spring. The hour demands that the world spare further suffering by supplying arms to the opposition and providing safe zones for civilians, so that the Syrian people can fulfill its right to peace and freedom.

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A political statement by Daam Workers Party on the recent Israeli air strikes in Syria

Daam Workers Party condemns the Israeli bombings of targets in Syria, especially in the heart of Damascus. This is blatant interference in the process that is underway in Syria, and it harms the revolution of the Syrian people: the struggle to topple the Assad regime and to live in dignity. Israel – which has been occupying the West Bank and the Golan Heights for decades, and which conducts an inhumane siege on Gaza – has no right to carry out an aggression which could lead to a regional war.

The Israeli adventure plays into the hands of the Assad regime, which conducts a barbaric attack on the Syrian people with support from Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah. The bombardment lends a sheen of credibility to Assad’s false claim that the revolution is an Israeli-American initiative. In recent days the regime, together with Hezbollah, has perpetrated a horrible massacre in the cities of Banias and Kassir; this is part of a program of ethnic cleansing, meant to terrorize the population and quell the revolution. The Israeli attacks distract attention from these crimes, putting the limelight instead on Israel’s long conflict with the Arab world. This is gratuitous service to the Assad regime.

The Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, which represents the Syrian people, demands international action in order to defend the civilian population and stop the massacres. The international community’s ongoing refusal to fulfill this demand has cost more than 70,000 lives, while the number of wounded and imprisoned is in the hundreds of thousands and the number of refugees in the millions. The world’s silence is destroying Syria. In the midst of it, Israel attacks without getting international or Arab support for its actions. Israel’s purpose is to show its strategic dominance over the region. It has nothing to do with the interests or the aspirations of the Syrian people which Israel never respected.

The toppling of the Syrian or Iranian regime does not interest Israel. The struggle belongs to the Syrian and Iranian peoples, which pit themselves against Fascist dictatorial regimes. The future of Hezbollah in Lebanon is likewise the interest of the Lebanese people, which has been hostage to Hezbollah’s sectarian ambitions.

Daam calls on public opinion in Israel and the world to take an unequivocal stand against the right-wing Israeli government and to call for an end to aggression, an end to the policy of occupation and settlements, and an end to the attitude of refusal that prevents a peace agreement.

We bend our heads before the Syrian revolution and its victims!

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