Tel Aviv Notes - No. 176 July 13, 2006
Syria’s Role In The Current Israeli-Palestinian Confrontation
Eyal Zisser
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Early in the morning of June 27, Israel Air Force planes broke the sound barrier as they flew over the palace of Syrian
President Bashar al-Asad in the Asad family’s hometown of Qardaha. That action was apparently driven by a lesson learned
from a similar overflight four years before, in the fall of 2002, which was intended to warn Asad against escalation of
the situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border but failed to impress him because he was completely unaware of the
overflight at the time and only learned about it from Israeli media reports several weeks after the event.
The latest Israeli overflight came two days after Hamas activists attacked an Israeli army position on the border
between Israel and the Gaza Strip and managed to abduct an Israel soldier and spirit him back to Gaza. That attack was
apparently carried out on the direct orders of the Hamas leadership based in Damascus, especially the Chairman of the
movement’s Political Bureau, Khaled Mash’al. Thus, the IAF overflight was meant to send a clear warning to Asad that
continued support of Mash’al and his comrades could cost Syria dearly.
Up till now, however, the overflight has produced no discernible results and Asad has apparently chosen to ignore the
Israeli signal and to persist in his course. At first, the Syrian media totally ignored the Israeli overflight; only
after it was widely covered by Israeli media did the Syrians hasten to report that their air defenses had driven off
Israeli warplanes that had penetrated Syria airspace. Syrian spokesmen also condemned the “Israeli aggression” and
repeatedly insisted that the Hamas people living in Damascus under Syrian protection confined themselves to political
and informational work and had no involvement in the military activity against Israel carried out by Hamas in the West
Bank and Gaza.
Hamas is not the only Palestinian terrorist organization with operational headquarters in Syria. The others include the
Islamic Jihad, led by Ramadan Shallah, and Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command,
which operates against Israel mostly from Lebanon. All these headquarters enjoy full freedom of maneuver in Syria, which
allows them to raise funds (mostly from Iran) and transfer them to the territory of the Palestinian Authority as well as
to prepare plans and transmit orders without having to worry about interference by Israeli security services.
Syria continues to support these terrorist organizations even though it has been under severe pressure for several years
to stop doing so. This pressure is part of a wider campaign led by Washington to secure Syrian cooperation on a range of
issues, including the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Iraq and the question of Lebanon. American efforts to
coerce Syria began after the American occupation of Iraq in the spring of 2003 and reached a peak in 2005, following the
murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri in February of that year, when a UN commission of inquiry
strongly hinted that Bashar al-Asad was implicated in the assassination.
However, the international pressure on Syria has substantially subsided since early 2006. The Americans backed off from
accusations that Syria was responsible for the terrorism in Iraq, and the head of the UN commission, the German judge
Detlev Mihlis, was replaced by a Belgian investigator; Serge Brammertz, who has taken a much more muted position on the
question of Syrian culpability in the murder of Hariri. Finally, France, a key member of the international coalition
demanding the removal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, has shown less enthusiasm for continuing pressure to end other
sorts of Syrian involvement in Lebanon.
These developments explain the relative complacency of Bashar al-Asad in the face of the latest Israeli threats. He
undoubtedly believes that these threats are just as hollow as a string of previous Israeli and American threats also
turned out to be, notwithstanding the presence of more than a hundred thousand American troops just to the east in Iraq.
Consequently, Bashar has stuck to his strategic position and refuses to entertain the idea of responding to any of these
pressures without some politically significant quid pro quo (such as revival of negotiations with Israel over the Golan
Heights) or of abandoning his policy of providing support for Palestinian terrorist organizations, especially Hamas and
Islamic Jihad. Indeed, Bashar has apparently concluded that standing firm in the face of American and Israeli pressure
not only will not weaken him domestically but will actually enable him to mobilize broader public support both at home
and throughout the rest of the Arab world. Moreover, in adopting this posture, he runs very little risk of American or
Israeli military action because such action – however threatening the rhetoric may seem – is not a viable option for
either Washington or Jerusalem.
In fact, the Syrians apparently think that their standing in the region has improved and that they have regained the
central role that the Bush Administration has tried to deny them. After all, would-be mediators are coming to Syria and
requesting Bashar’s help in resolving the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis, because it seems that the road to Khaled
Mash’al, hence, to the release of the captured Israeli soldier, must pass through Damascus. It is therefore not
surprising that Bashar has chosen to ignore the Israeli overflight of his palace, just as he has ignored other signals
sent by Israel and the United States over the past six years.
*************
Tel Aviv Notes is published by
TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies www.tau.ac.il/jcss/
& The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies http://www.dayan.org/
through the generosity of Sari and Israel Roizman, Philadelphia