Netanyahu’s message to Assad: Israel’s sole interest is to bar weapons from reaching Hezbollah
The PM is sending a pacifying message to Assad, hoping this will make it easier for the president to avoid responding to the strikes.
The diplomatic-security cabinet met in Jerusalem for more than three hours Sunday afternoon to discuss tensions on the northern border in the wake of reported Israeli airstrikes in Syria. According to two senior Israeli officials briefed on the outcome of the meeting, the main decision was to send as pacifying a message as possible to Syrian President Bashar Assad, in order to prevent further escalation in the north.
Though Israel has been careful not to formally claim responsibility for the airstrikes, officials in Jerusalem were pleased by the international community’s response. U.S. President Barack Obama stressed that Israel has the right to defend itself, as did British Foreign Secretary William Hague. Russia and China said nothing, while even the condemnations in the Arab world were few and half-hearted.
As part of its effort to send a pacifying message, Israel will continue to maintain official silence about the two airstrikes reported in foreign media outlets over the past few days. A senior Israeli official said the goal is to make it clear to Assad that Israel’s sole interest is in preventing advanced weaponry from reaching Hezbollah: It isn’t interested in intervening in Syria’s civil war or helping the rebels topple his regime.
Sunday’s meeting of the diplomatic-security cabinet, which consisted mainly of briefings by the heads of the intelligence agencies and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, was the second in three days. The previous meeting took place Thursday night, a few hours before the first reported airstrike. A few hours before the second reported airstrike, on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a secret visit to the headquarters of the IDF’s Northern Command.
Despite the weekend’s tensions, Netanyahu decided to depart for China as planned on Sunday. The fact that he did so indicates the intelligence community views the chances of either Syria or Hezbollah responding to the reported Israeli airstrikes as low. Moreover, going ahead with the visit is part of Jerusalem’s effort to send a pacifying message to Assad.
Netanyahu and his advisors concluded that canceling the visit at the last minute would be interpreted by Syria and Hezbollah as a sign of Israeli intentions to escalate the situation. The prime minister also wanted to avoid sparking a crisis with Beijing, after he had already offended the Chinese leadership by canceling a visit at the last minute in November 2010. Still the diplomatic-security cabinet meeting did cause Netanyahu to delay his flight by almost three hours.
In a conversation with the reporters accompanying him to China after boarding the plane, Netanyahu declined to comment on the situation in Syria, focusing instead on the importance of his state visit to China. “I know what you want, but I’m barred from talking about it,” he said. “In any case, I never considered canceling my trip to China.”
Netanyahu will return to Israel on Friday. In his absence, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon will serve as acting prime minister. Netanyahu will receive regular updates on the security situation while in China, and also in the air. But if an escalation occurs requiring the convening of the diplomatic-security cabinet in order to make decisions, it would take him many hours to return to Israel.
The prime minister has had bad luck with previous trips abroad at moments of high security tension. In May 2010, for instance, he was in Canada during the navy’s botched interception of a Turkish-sponsored flotilla to Gaza. He and his aides had thought the chances of the raid turning into a diplomatic crisis were low, and therefore decided against canceling the visit. But in fact, it turned into a major crisis.
Hopefully, current assessments of the likelihood of escalation in the north aren’t similarly flawed. But if they are, Netanyahu is liable to find himself flying back to Israel mid-week instead of having a comfortable chat with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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