Israel wary of Syria agreement
There was neither praise nor criticism from Jerusalem on Tuesday, when the first reports surfaced saying that Syria has agreed to surrender its chemical weapons in order to halt an attack by the United States.
In recent days and weeks, the Israeli political establishment has sent out a strong message that it isn’t taking sides in the Syrian civil war, and that it isn’t pressuring the US in either direction, for or against a strike.
It maintained this aloofness upon hearing of Syria’s purported offer. “We don’t want to get involved in it because it’s not about us – they’re not burning Israeli flags,” Paul Hirschson, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told The AJN. “We don’t want to get dragged into it.”
But while the government was silent in the hours after the agreement, in the hours before – when the proposal lay on the table – some influential voices, albeit outside the government, passed comment.
An ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, former foreign minister and now chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said that Syria could simply use the chance to “buy time”.
Moreover, President Shimon Peres said he didn’t expect the world to trust Syria as a “real partner” and commented of Syria: “There will be tough negotiations, because at least one partner is not trustworthy and their acceptance means very little.”
But in Washington the Obama administration, which floated the idea of a chemical-weapons handover, was optimistic. And former secretary of state Hillary Clinton threw her support behind the idea, while dealing with hesitations from the likes of Lieberman by emphasising that it “cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction”.
She addressed one of Israel’s key fears regarding Syria’s chemical weapons, namely that they could fall into terrorist hands and be turned on Israeli civilians.
“The international community cannot ignore the ongoing threat from the Assad regime’s stockpiles of chemical weapons, whether they are used against Syrian civilians or transferred to Hezbollah or stolen by other terrorists,” said Clinton.
She added: “This is about protecting both the Syrian people and our friends in the region.”
NATHAN JEFFAY
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