israel not pushing US to attack syria, never in a thousand years

Assad used chemical weapons on rebels, confirms senior Israeli official
Jonathan Lis, Haaretz, Apr 29, 2013

A senior Israeli official said on Monday that intelligence services have concrete and unequivocal evidence that Bashar Assad’s military has used chemical weapons against rebels. The official said:

These are not intelligence estimates, rather proof, and even more than proof. There is substantial material about the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s army. It is known to all intelligence agencies. All intelligence elements have been updated. No one has any doubts on the matter. One of the central dangers in Israel’s view is the transfer of Syrian weapons to Hezbollah and Lebanon, as well as to terrorist organizations trying to reach the border. The possibility of them acquiring chemical or conventional weapons they never had before has implications for the State of Israel.

Over the weekend, Netanyahu instructed ministers not to speak in public about the issue of Syrian chemical weapons. Netanyahu’s request came after Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin warned in an interview with Army Radio that if the Iranians see that the international community respond tepidly to Syria’s use of chemical weapons they will continue to push forward their nuclear program. Meanwhile, Labor MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer alleged Monday that Syria’s chemical weapons are “trickling” to Hezbollah, the first claim by a senior politician in Israel that one of the country’s nightmare scenarios is coming true. Ben-Eliezer, the former defense minister, also called for international intervention in Syria’s civil war to stop mass civilian deaths, but did not supply any evidence for his claim. “The process of weapon transferal to Hezbollah has begun,” Ben-Eliezer told AP. He refused to elaborate. Ben-Eliezer, a retired general, also told Israel Radio:

I have no doubt that Assad has already used chemical weapons, and that these weapons are trickling to Hezbollah. I am amazed by the silence of the world. The international community needs to intervene to end the high civilian death toll in Syria’s civil war. I wouldn’t rule out preparing a plan for Israel to act if the world continues to remain silent and the weapons continue to flow to Hezbollah. These are crazy people, terrorists who will not hesitate to use this tomorrow morning.

On Sunday, the political-security cabinet convened for four hours to discuss the situation in in Syria, the first in-depth discussion by senior ministers about events there since the new government was formed, a senior Israeli official said. In the weeks since the government was established, the forum has met several times, but those meetings dealt primarily with intelligence surveys and briefings for those ministers lacking diplomatic and security knowledge. The senior official noted that Sunday’s meeting dealt less with hearing assessments and more on a discussion of what Israel’s policy should be regarding the situation in Syria. The government must decide whether to formulate a new policy or to ratify the policy of the previous government, he said.

Our military and Washington sources report that the Obama administration has lodged a strong complaint with the offices of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon over the claim published Monday by a senior Israeli official (unnamed) of “clear evidence based on raw, real and solid material,” not just assessments, that Assad is using chemical weapons against rebels. He said this information is known to every concerned intelligence agency and none question it. In their complaint, US officials said they knew nothing of this evidence and US intelligence had not been made privy to such material. (DEBKAfile, Apr 30 2013)

Israel Says It Is Not Seeking US Intervention in Syria
Ethan Bronner, NYT, Apr 28 2013

A senior Israeli official said Sunday that Israel was not urging the US to take military action in Syria, despite intelligence assessments asserting that Assad recently used chemical weapons. Yuval Steinitz, the minister of strategic and intelligence affairs and international relations, said at a conference in New York sponsored by the JPost:

We never asked, nor did we encourage, the US to take military action in Syria. And we are not making any comparison or linkage with Iran, which is a completely different matter.

Steinitz said the situations in the two countries were not comparable. Syria was engaged in a civil war with terrible humanitarian consequences internally; Iran’s nuclear program, he contended, posed devastating, even existential, threats to Israel and much of the region and world. The questions of Syria, where more than 70,000 civilians have been killed, and of Iranian nuclear ambition hovered over much of the conference at which Steinitz spoke. Meir Dagan, a past head of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, said he doubted that chemical weapons used in Syria, which he described as limited, had been authorized by Assad. Therefore, he said, he understood US caution about intervening. Dagan also endorsed a statement made by an earlier speaker, Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, who said Israel’s strategic situation was better than it had been in many years because its neighbors all faced internal turmoil and none posed a conventional threat to Israel.