Syria’s Assad Has Become Israel’s Ally
Israel wants Assad to remain in power. Both Israel and the Syrian president now depend on Russia, and when Israel threatens Syria over Iran, it should know it's threatening Putin, too
Early in 2012, the year after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the Foreign Ministry drafted recommendations on Israel’s position regarding Syrian President Bashar Assad.
As Haaretz reported at the time, the ministry said Israel should denounce the slaughter in Syria and call for Assad’s ouster. It argued that Israel shouldn’t be the only Western country not to condemn Assad, since that would feed conspiracy theories that Israel preferred the mass murderer to remain in power.
The Israeli foreign minister at the time, Avigdor Lieberman, accepted this recommendation, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed it. Netanyahu denounced the slaughter and the Syrian army and charged that “various leaders have no moral qualms about killing their neighbors and their own people as well.” But he never mentioned Assad as the person responsible or demanded his ouster. Israel’s UN ambassador during that period, Ron Prosor, said Assad has “no moral right to lead his people,” but that was it.
These diplomatic acrobatics and the Lieberman-Netanyahu dispute only fed the conspiracy theories, and Syrian rebel leaders were convinced that Israel wanted Assad to remain in power. They were right.
Now that Assad has regained control of most of Syria and is waging a final battle against rebels in the south, Israel is acting as if it is now reformulating its policy and becoming “reconciled” to Assad’s continued rule. Several weeks ago, Israel reportedly told Russia it wouldn’t oppose that, as if the decision were in its hands or as if Israel even had any leverage over what kind of government is in power in Syria after the war ends.
But Israel isn’t merely “reconciled” to rule by Assad. It also feared the prospect that the various rebel militias might succeed in ousting him, sparking a new civil war among the rebels themselves.
Position papers drafted by the Israeli army and the Foreign Ministry over the past two years didn’t actually voice support for the Syrian president, but their assessments show that they viewed his continued rule as preferable or even vital for Israel’s security. Israel’s close cooperation with Russia, which gave Israeli forces a free hand to attack Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Syria, added the Israelis to the unofficial coalition of Arab states that support Assad’s continued rule.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi, who met with the head of Syrian intelligence in 2015, said that same year that “Egypt and Syria are in the same boat.” Egyptian delegations visited Damascus despite Syria’s ouster from the Arab League, and in a 2017 interview, Al-Sissi even said that “Egypt supports the armies of states like Iraq, Libya and Syria.”
King Abdullah of Jordan was one of the first leaders to denounce Assad and demand his ouster. But he later reversed himself, thereby angering Saudi Arabia. And following conversations between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian officials, even Riyadh is no longer publicly opposing Assad’s continued tenure.
