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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[Published in Hebrew on July 30, 2014, before Hamas captured an Israeli soldier]

The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for three weeks already, and no one knows when it will end. It has killed more than 1,100 people in the Gaza Strip, of whom 80% were civilians, including 220 children and 120 women. It has wounded thousands and displaced some 400,000. It has destroyed water and electricity infrastructures and hundreds of homes. But like most wars, it did not begin when the first shot was fired. We may take as its starting point June 15, when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Hamas to be responsible for the abduction of three yeshiva students in the Hebron area, although Hamas denied all involvement. Netanyahu used the abduction as a pretext to make war on Hamas, re-arresting Palestinians who had been released from Israeli prisons as part of the 2011 deal freeing Gilad Shalit. Netanyahu provoked Hamas, and now he is requesting help from the US, Egypt, and even Abu Mazen to get him out of the hole he dug.

The war that was not meant to be

Netanyahu was motivated by narrow political considerations. His war on Hamas had nothing to do with Gaza. The government of Israel had just abandoned nine months of futile talks with Abu Mazen, mediated by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Israel’s refusal to discuss core issues, particularly borders and the dismantling of settlements, had caused the talks to break down. Moreover, Netanyahu had violated his promise to release a group of Palestinian political prisoners. As a result, the White House blamed Israel for the breakdown, and Israel became isolated on the world stage. This was the moment Hamas had waited for: It approached Abu Mazen to form a Palestinian unity government. While Netanyahu reacted by calling Abu Mazen the “head of a terror group,” the US and Europe expressed support for the unity government.

According to Netanyahu’s calculations, the current war was not supposed to happen. Hamas was almost finished: The military coup in Egypt had brought down the elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ main friend there. Egypt’s new president, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, added Hamas to the list of terror organizations. He did all he could to crush it, destroying the smuggling tunnels between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, as well as closing the above-ground Rafah border-crossing. In the new situation, Hamas’ ardent wish was that Abu Mazen would take responsibility for paying the wages of Hamas government officials and act to lift the siege on Gaza. But Netanyahu, certain that Hamas was on its last legs, took advantage of the abduction of the three students to begin the above-mentioned arrests in the West Bank. He also pressured the US to prevent Qatar from sending money to Hamas that could have been used to pay public servants in the Strip. Today the magnitude of his error is apparent. Hamas has bounced back thanks to Netanyahu’s generous assistance, while Israel’s citizens and thousands of Gazans are paying the price.

The military operation began on July 8. For an entire week, Israel bombed the Strip from the air, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing 250 Palestinians, including women and children. Israel’s Iron Dome rocket-defense system held its own against Hamas rockets and prevented Israeli losses, while the Palestinians received the full force of the onslaught. Netanyahu and his partners – Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz – were sure the war was winding down. On July 15, Egypt came up with its ceasefire proposal: stop fighting now, talk later. Israel accepted it, because it suited its policy of “quiet in exchange for quiet.” The Egyptian proposal was like a gift for Israel, but it signified punishment and surrender for Hamas, because General Sisi was not prepared to guarantee the opening of the Rafah crossing or the lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

Hamas’ rejection of the ceasefire proposal supplied Netanyahu with an excuse to step up the operation, and he sought an acceptable justification for sending in limited ground forces. It seems the US was not willing to give him a blank check, so Netanyahu found a new issue – the tunnels. Since July 18, Israeli TV channels have brought up this subject again and again, until every Israeli has become an expert on the technical intricacies of tunnel construction and the difficulties involved in digging them.

The leftwing is with Netanyahu… the US is not

Using the tunnels, Netanyahu has managed to unite the entire nation behind his war, from the ultranationalist settlers to liberal-left Meretz. The incursion of ground troops created an Israeli consensus which holds that this is Israel’s most justifiable war in many years. The sirens in Tel Aviv brought Hamas into every home, and Israelis were suddenly attracted to Netanyahu’s “balanced reasoning.” The Iron Dome intercepting Hamas rockets above the cities made people forget that it was Netanyahu who set the bloody ball rolling, and all the world’s wisest are having a hard time stopping it. Meretz fell in love with the Egyptian proposal and the possibility of resuscitating the “moderate axis,” which includes Abu Mazen, the Jordanian and Saudi Abdullahs, and of course General Sisi.

The celebration could have continued if two important factors had not arisen. First, unlike the previous Gaza incursion (“Cast Lead”), in which 10 Israeli soldiers died, the current war has claimed the lives of 53 soldiers so far. Second, the international community was not prepared to accept the images of death and devastation in Gaza. Two days after the start of the ground incursion, the magnitude of the destruction became apparent with the flattening of the Shijaiyah neighborhood. Kerry’s response, “A hell of a pinpoint operation,” expressed the revulsion felt around the world. For the first time in its history, Israel discovered that the US does not necessarily stand by it automatically.

Not only was the US administration disgusted by the images from Gaza, it also rejected the Egyptian proposal as the basis for ending the war. When Hamas presented the Qatar-Turkey proposal, which made a ceasefire dependent on lifting the Gaza blockade, the US located itself between the two proposals. For this, it was reviled by the entire political spectrum in Israel, including the leftwing, which had always sided with the US administration against Netanyahu’s government. This is a strange situation; after all, the elements – Egypt, Abu Mazen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and of course Israel – are all US allies. It is an internal “family dispute,” and there is no axis of evil against which to unite.

But in fact, the stand of the Obama administration is consistent. The Israeli Left fell in love with the “moderate” Arab camp, and embraced it in its struggle against the extreme Israeli Right, which refuses any political agreement; however, the US views the moderate camp as problematic and unable to bring regional stability. The US considers the Saudi regime to be a base for the Islamic fundamentalism that nurtured Bin Laden, while the Egyptian regime is seen as a caricature of the Mubarak regime, which came to power following a military coup and resulted in a harsh dictatorship. In contrast, the US sees the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderating influence on fundamentalist extremism (as represented by the Islamic State of Iran and Syria—ISIS). The US believes that the Brotherhood has deep roots in and significant influence on Arab society. It believes that under normal circumstances, the Brotherhood would be willing to play the democratic game, as Islamic parties do in Turkey and Tunisia. The US thinks that the path of General Sisi and his Saudi partner leads only to a dead end—to ongoing political instability, corruption and oppression—and that it fails to address the economic problems besetting Egypt.

Between harsh alternatives

US policy is based on cooperation with the Muslim Brotherhood. This explains US support for the Palestinian unity government against which Netanyahu has been waging an all-out battle. But Netanyahu has no alternative to Hamas or a Palestinian unity government. He himself fears Hamas’ total collapse, because ISIS, from the House of Saud, is likely to fill the vacuum; he therefore seeks a way out which will not compel him to make far-reaching concessions.

Thus those who want to strengthen Abu Mazen at Hamas’ expense, on the basis of the Egyptian initiative, find themselves in the same camp as Netanyahu. Only the Palestinian people can strengthen Abu Mazen, but the more that Israel and the Zionist Left embrace him, the more the Palestinian people reject him. At the same time, all those who want to strengthen Sisi at the expense of the Muslim Brotherhood, like many of the secular liberals in Egypt, are joining up with a murderous dictator. Currently, Egypt is negotiating an interim agreement, known as the “amended Egyptian initiative.” The US is trying to bring its quarrelsome partners back together and work out a compromise between Egypt and Qatar. The agreement being cooked up looks something like this: Abu Mazen will get control of the Rafah crossing; Hamas will get the blockade partially lifted; Sisi will earn himself some legitimacy; and Israel will get its yearned-for quiet. In the meantime, the residents of the Gaza Strip are suffering death and devastation for the third time since Hamas took control of the territory.

The war will eventually come to an end, but the problems underlying it will only get worse. The Occupation, source of all evil, will continue to shake up Israel again and again. Those who support Netanyahu’s “justified war,” including the Israeli Left and opinion makers in the media, forget that the world is sick of the Occupation, of gross violations of human rights, of closures and the Separation Wall, of the settlements and settlers, of the checkpoints, of bored soldiers who fire at students, and of the repeated destruction in Gaza.

Instead of waking up only when rockets are fired in its direction, Israeli society must take responsibility for the fact that the government imprisons the Palestinians in its name and embitters their lives. The wide-eyed innocence of many Israelis who repeat the mantra, “We got out of Gaza, so what do they want from us?” is sanctimonious hypocrisy. Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip unilaterally—while continuing to control the air, the sea, and most of the land gateways—as punishment for the Palestinians. It was an attempt to weaken the West Bank and divide the Palestinian people. Tricks like these—plus various alliances, military and technological superiority, and the Iron Dome—cannot purify what is rotten to the core. The Occupation must end and a peace agreement must be signed including both parts of the Palestinian people, those in the West Bank and those in Gaza. Only in this way will Israel regain international legitimacy, and only in this way will it halt its headlong rush towards catastrophe. The more it destroys the future of the Palestinian people, the more it will become a barbaric and Kahanist society.

– Translated by Yonatan Preminger

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