WarSclerotic

Two days have passed since mysterious blasts rocked a military ammunition depot in Syria, and it is still unclear what exactly happened in those depots.

The foreign media was thin with information. If the explosions really occurred at 2 a.m. or so, then hours went by before the first trickle of reports began to crop up in the Arab press, and even then the incident didn’t really make big headlines.

The main reason for this, most likely, is that the public’s attention, both in the Middle East and in the world as a whole, is currently fully focused on the events in Egypt. In addition, no official in the region voiced any immediate reaction, at least not publicly, to what reportedly happened near Latakia. It took the Syrian government more than 24 hours to even address the incident, and even then, it said that the explosions had resulted from an accident.

Western officials also didn’t provide any information on the blasts, and thus an air of mystery was created around the rumors that several missiles, fired into a group of arms depots, had caused the explosions. Who fired the missiles? What was the target? An unknown opposition group claimed responsibility for the assault, but other reports by Syrian rebel groups suggested that fighter jets had been heard flying overhead at the time. Latakia, and the nearby port city of Tartus, are the center of the Alawite stronghold in Syria. It is to this area that Russian aid and weapons are transferred, and it is where Syrian President Bashar Assad is likely to flee to if he loses power in Damascus.

It is possible that further details surrounding the mysterious blasts — in which, according to Syrian reports, several soldiers were killed — will begin to emerge in the coming days. But for now, the main drama is in Egypt, and all eyes are focused on the clashes there. The weekend death toll in Egypt easily overshadowed “just” a few more dozen casualties in Syria (on top of the 100,000 deaths since the start of the Syrian civil war over two years ago).

Over the weekend, Israeli officials surmised that the Muslim Brotherhood would not be able to erode the legitimacy of the military coup that ousted Mohammed Morsi last week, though the rising number of dead and injured could certainly make it difficult to stabilize Egypt. The main concern in Jerusalem is further deterioration in the security situation in Sinai, especially since the Egyptian army will focus all of its resources on the big cities, paying less attention on what happens in the peninsula.

Under the veil of this chaos, terror organizations could try to carry out spectacular attacks that would embarrass both Egypt and Israel, so Israel will likely be raising its intelligence and operational alert level along the Egyptian border in the near future, similar to the current alert level along the Syrian border.