Ben C. Solomon for The New York Times
Multimedia Feature
From Syrian Refugees, Tales of Dislocation
By BEN C. SOLOMON and SERGIO PEÇANHA
More than 6.5 million Syrians have been displaced by
the war. The Times visited four refugees to hear their stories. Farooq
al-Sayed, above, lost two brothers in the conflict.
Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria
By JODI RUDOREN
Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria
By JODI RUDOREN
Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images
Israeli soldiers conducted a military exercise in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, near the border with Syria.
Israel sees the enforcement of President Obama’s “red line” as essential
to halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and seems to prefer an attack that
would maintain the status quo without strengthening either side.
News Analysis
White House Looks to Syria Vote as Rudder for Rest of Term
By PETER BAKER
President Obama and his team see Congress’s action, either approval or
rejection, as a guidepost that goes well beyond the question of an
attack on Syria.
Pentagon Is Ordered to Expand Potential Targets in Syria With a Focus on Forces
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
The Obama administration is now talking about using aircraft to strike
specific targets, as intelligence indicates the Syrian government has
moved troops and equipment.
Iraqis, Looking Across Border, See Replays of Past and Fears for the Future
By TIM ARANGO
As the debate over military action in Syria has unfolded in the West,
Iraqis see the fate of the two countries as inextricably intertwined.
Skepticism and Wariness in Talk of Syria Attack
By MICHAEL WINES
As President Obama tries to rally domestic support for military action
against Syria, the skepticism in Waynesburg, Pa., underscores the
political hurdles he faces.
By JODI RUDOREN
Published: September 5, 2013
JERUSALEM — President Obama’s position on Syria — punish President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons without seeking to force him from power — has been called “half-pregnant” by critics at home and abroad who prefer a more decisive American intervention to end Syria’s civil war.
Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images
Israeli soldiers conducted a military exercise in the
Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, near the border with Syria.
Tracking the Syrian Crisis
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But Mr. Obama’s limited strike proposal has one crucial foreign ally: Israel.
Israeli officials have consistently made the case that enforcing Mr.
Obama’s narrow “red line” on Syria is essential to halting the nuclear
ambitions of Israel’s archenemy, Iran. More quietly, Israelis have
increasingly argued that the best outcome for Syria’s
two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no
outcome.
For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian
perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s
government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups,
increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.
“This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but
at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,” said Alon
Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. “Let them both
bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long
as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.”
The synergy between the Israeli and American positions, while not
explicitly articulated by the leaders of either country, could be a
critical source of support as Mr. Obama seeks Congressional approval for
surgical strikes in Syria. Some Republicans have pushed him to
intervene more assertively to tip the balance in the Syrian conflict,
while other politicians from both parties are loath to involve the
United States in another Middle Eastern conflict on any terms.
But Israel’s national security concerns have broad, bipartisan support
in Washington, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the
influential pro-Israel lobby in Washington, weighed in Tuesday in
support of Mr. Obama’s approach. The group’s statement said nothing,
however, about the preferred outcome of the civil war, instead saying
that America must “send a forceful message” to Iran and Hezbollah and
“take a firm stand that the world’s most dangerous regimes cannot obtain
and use the most dangerous weapons.”
After years of upheaval in the Middle East and tension between Mr. Obama
and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the two leaders are
now largely in sync on how to handle not just Syria, but also Egypt. Mr.
Obama has not withheld American aid to Egypt after the military-backed
ouster of the elected Islamist government, while Israel strongly backs
the Egyptian military as a source of stability.
On Syria, in fact, Israel pioneered the kind of limited strike Mr. Obama
is now proposing: four times this year, it has bombed convoys of
advanced weapons it suspected were being transferred to Hezbollah, the
Lebanese Shiite militia that Israel considers a major threat.
It has otherwise been content to watch the current stalemate in Syria
pull in what it considers a range of enemies: not only the Syrian Army
and Iran, but also Hezbollah, which has thousands of fighters engaged on
the battlefronts in Syria, and Sunni Islamists aligned against them.
Though Syria and Israel have technically been at war for more than 40
years, the conflict in Syria is now viewed mainly through the prism of
Iran. A prolonged conflict is perceived as hurting Iran, which finances
Mr. Assad’s war effort. Whether Mr. Obama follows through on his promise
to retaliate for the use of chemical weapons is a test of his
commitment, ultimately, to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb — as long as
the retaliation does not become a full-scale intervention in Syria.
“If it’s Iran-first policy, then any diversion to Syria is not
fruitful,” said Aluf Benn, editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“From the Israeli point of view, the worst scenario is mission-creep in
Syria and America gets entangled in a third war in the Middle East,
which paralyzes its ability to strike Iran and limits Israel’s ability
to strike Iran as well.”
This spring, when an Israeli official called for an international
response to what he said were earlier Syrian chemical attacks, he was
muzzled and reprimanded for appearing to pressure the White House. Now,
said Eyal Zisser, a historian at Tel Aviv University who specializes in
the region, “it’s clear that Israel does not want to appear as somebody
that is pushing the United States for a deep involvement.”
There are significant differences between Israel and the United States
on Syria. There was widespread criticism here of Mr. Obama’s decision to
delay responding to the chemical attack, with the quote “When you have
to shoot, shoot, don’t talk” from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”
becoming a common refrain. One Israeli dentist even took out a large
newspaper ad promoting his implant services with a picture of Mr. Obama
captioned, “He doesn’t have teeth?”
There has also been a broader debate about how best to respond to the war in Syria.
When the uprising began, many here saw Mr. Assad, who like his
predecessor and father had maintained quiet on the border, as “the devil
you know,” and therefore preferable to the rebels, some of whom were
aligned with Al Qaeda or Sunni militants like the Palestinian Hamas
faction.
As the death toll has mounted, more Israelis joined a camp led by Amos
Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, who argues that
the devil you know is, actually, a devil who should be ousted sooner
rather than later.
That split remains. But as hopes have dimmed for the emergence of a
moderate, secular rebel force that might forge democratic change and
even constructive dialogue with Israel, a third approach has gained
traction: Let the bad guys burn themselves out.
“The perpetuation of the conflict is absolutely serving Israel’s
interest,” said Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based analyst for the International Crisis Group.
Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy
at the Brookings Institution, was one of several experts who said this
view differs from the callous “let them all kill each other” shrug
popular here during the long-running Iran-Iraq war. Rather, Ms. Wittes
said, the reasoning behind a strike that would not significantly change
the Syrian landscape is that the West needs more time to prop up
opposition forces it finds more palatable and prepare them for future
governing.
She cited dangers for Israel if the conflict continues to drag on,
including more efforts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah,
instability in Lebanon and pressure on Jordan.
Despite those threats, Matthew Levitt, who studies the region at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Jerusalem and Washington essentially agree that “right now, there’s no good way for this war to end.”
Israeli leaders “want Assad to be punished; they’d like it to be
punishing enough that it actually makes a difference in the war but not
so much that it completely takes him out,” Mr. Levitt said. “The
Israelis do not think the status quo is tenable either, but they think
the status quo right now is better than the war ending tomorrow, because
the war ending tomorrow could be much worse. There’s got to be a
tomorrow, day-after plan.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 6, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated Amos Yadlin’s former position. He was the head of Israeli military intelligence, not the director of the Mossad intelligence agency.
For Israel, the status quo in Syria seems preferable to either a victory
by President Bashar al-Assad’s government or a strengthening of rebel
groups.
More News on Syria
latest
The Times is tracking the conflict in Syria and the deliberations about an international response.Related
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New U.S. Envoy to U.N. Strongly Condemns Russia (September 6, 2013)
New U.S. Envoy to U.N. Strongly Condemns Russia
Samantha Power on Syria: Ms. Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at a news conference on the crisis in Syria.By RICK GLADSTONE
Published: September 5, 2013
Samantha Power, the new United States ambassador to the United Nations, strongly criticized Russia on Thursday in her first extensive public remarks about Syria, accusing the Kremlin of holding the Security Council hostage by blocking even modest efforts to condemn the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict.Tracking the Syrian Crisis
The Times is providing updates, analysis and public reaction from around the world.Multimedia
Related
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News Analysis: White House Looks to Syria Vote as Rudder for Rest of Term (September 6, 2013)
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Pentagon Is Ordered to Expand Potential Targets in Syria With a Focus on Forces (September 6, 2013)
She said Russia’s actions signaled there was no “available path forward at the Security Council.”Appearing before the United Nations press corps outside the Security Council, Ms. Power said the United States had been briefing other member states on its intelligence assessment about an attack in the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21. The assessment concluded that banned chemical munitions had been used and that the forces of President Bashar al-Assad were responsible.The Obama administration says that more than 1,400 civilians were killed in the strike, including more than 400 children.Mr. Assad and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have ridiculed the American claims, asserting that it would be nonsensical for the Syrian government to use such weapons on its own citizens, and that an inquiry by United Nations chemical weapons investigators had not yet presented its findings on whether such munitions were even deployed.The Syrian government has said that if chemical weapons were used, then opposition forces seeking to topple Mr. Assad must have been responsible.Mr. Putin has repeatedly warned that Mr. Obama’s threat to carry out a missile attack against Mr. Assad’s forces would be a violation of the United Nations Charter, which says only the Security Council can authorize such military action. As a permanent member of the council, Russia has strongly suggested it would veto such a move.Ms. Power is a longtime aide to President Obama who began her tenure as the American ambassador last month just as the latest crisis in the Syrian conflict was escalating. She made her remarks on Syria as Mr. Obama was meeting with other members of the Group of 20 nations at a summit meeting hosted by Mr. Putin outside St. Petersburg, where the Syria crisis was overshadowing other issues.She said the American intelligence findings “overwhelmingly point to one stark conclusion: The Assad regime perpetrated an attack.”She added, “The actions of the Assad regime are morally reprehensible, and they violate clearly established international norms.”Ms. Power also castigated what she called the failure of the United Nations structure to thwart or prosecute the atrocities committed in the Syrian conflict, which is now well into its third year. She said, “The system devised in 1945 precisely to deal with threats of this nature did not work as it was supposed to.”Ms. Power had particularly strong criticism for Russia, which she accused of using its veto power on the Security Council to protect “the prerogatives of Russia” despite international outrage over what many nations now believe was a chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs. She took note that the attack had been committed at the same time the United Nations inspection team was visiting “just across town” to investigate earlier allegations of chemical weapons use.She said that “Russia continues to hold the Council hostage,” and that “what we have learned — what the Syrian people have learned — is that the Security Council the world needs to deal with this crisis is not the Security Council we have.”Asked about Mr. Putin’s comments on what he has called the unconvincing case the United States has made regarding the Assad government’s culpability, Ms. Power was dismissive. “We have seen nothing in President Putin’s comments that suggest there is an available path forward at the Security Council,” she said.At the summit meeting of the Group of 20 nations, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated that only the United Nations Security Council could authorize military action — not the American Congress or any other national legislature — and he maintained that Russia was not obstructing action in the body, despite three Russian vetoes of resolutions dealing with Syria.“The Russian side is not blocking the deliberations of other countries within the framework of the United Nations Security Council,” he said. “It is trying to encourage its partners, including its partners in Washington, to objectively consider the situation and not to make decisions before the verdict of the U.N. experts who are working in Syria.”Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia. -
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