WarSclerotic

Report: Syria Has 1,000 Tons of Chemical Weapons – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Illustration: Chemical warfare drill

IDF spokesman’s unit

A report presented Monday at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s (ICT) World Summit on Counter-Terrorism said that Syria had a large stockpile of chemical weapons, and was likely to use them if attacked by the U.S. or Western countries. According to the report, Syria has one of the largest stores of VX, a deadly nerve gas, as well as of Sarin, the chemical said to have been used in the attack that killed some 1,400 people in a Damascus suburb last month.

Syria has been stockpiling chemical weapons since the 1980s, the report said, and the army now possesses more than 1,000 tons of chemical weapons, stored in over 50 cities throughout the country. Syria has many methods to deploy those weapons, according to the report, including rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs, and ballistic missiles.

Syria also manufactures chemical weapons in five locations throughout the country, the report said. Damascus even has a special institute – Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Scientifiques (CERS) – dedicated to developing chemical and biological weapons, the report said. The institute works closely with the Syrian army, and reports directly to President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria’s biggest chemical factory is at Al Safira, about 20 kilometers south of Aleppo, the report said, and contains the country’s biggest stash of Sarin. This site was established in the 1980s with the help of Russia, and contains some of Syria’s biggest military secrets.

There are also large caches in Syrian cities, including Damascus, Aleppo, and Latakia. These are under the direct control of the army, the report said.

However, it added, it is possible that some of these stores have been taken by rebel groups, who have in turn conquered and lost some of the cities where chemical weapons are stored.

As many of the rebel groups are associated with Al Qaeda, it is highly possible that some of the chemical weapons will end up in the hands of terrorist groups. Meanwhile, the report added, it was possible that Assad would hand over some of the weapons stores to his ally Hezbollah for “safekeeping” if he felt they were threatened. Such scenarios could happen “at any time,” the report added.

Assad could avert attack by giving up chemical arms, Kerry says | The Times of Israel.

Secretary of state surmises it is unlikely Syrian leader will turn over all of weapons stock, asserts evidence regime behind gassing

Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at the State Department in Washington, Monday, August 26, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

LONDON — Syrian President Bashar Assad could resolve the crisis surrounding a chemical weapons attack simply by turning over “every single bit” of his weapons stock to the international community within a week, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday.

But Kerry, holding a news conference in London with British counterpart William Hague on Monday, said he thinks Assad “isn’t about to do that.”

“Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week, turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting, but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done,” he said.

Kerry was asked about comments that Assad made to CBS anchorman Charlie Rose in which the Syrian president said there was no conclusive evidence about who is to blame for the chemical weapons attack.

Asked about Assad’s denial, Kerry said, “I just gave you real evidence.”

“Evidence that as a former prosecutor in the United States I could take into a courtroom and get admitted,” the secretary added. Kerry said he had personally tried people who had been sent to prison for life for less than what Assad is accused of doing.

“So the evidence is powerful and the question for all of us is what are we going to do about it,” Kerry said. “Turn our backs? Have a moment of silence?”

“We know that his regime gave orders to prepare for a chemical attack. We know they deployed forces.”

Kerry added that Washington “knows where the rockets came from and where they landed … and it was no accident that they all came from regime -controlled territory and all landed” in opposition-held territory.

He added that the United States knows “where the rockets came from and where they landed … and it was no accident that they all came from regime -controlled territory and all landed” in opposition-held territory.

Meanwhile, Russian and Syrian foreign ministers said Monday they planned to push for the return of United Nations inspectors to Syria to continue their probe into the use of chemical weapons.

Lavrov said after Monday’s talks with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moallem that Moscow will continue to promote a peaceful settlement and may try to convene a gathering of all Syrian opposition figures who are interested in peaceful settlement. He said a U.S. attack on Syria would deal a fatal blow to peace efforts.

Arad: Attack On Syria May Not be a Good Idea – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Uzi Arad

Flash 90

Former National Security Council director Uzi Arad said Sunday that he was not sure an attack on Bashar al-Assad’s forces would be successful, or a good idea altogether.

Speaking Sunday at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s (ICT) World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, taking place at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Arad said that President Barack H. Obama had bitten off more than he could chew, and that the best thing he could do now was extricate himself from the corner he had backed himself into with as much dignity as possible.

“Syria is not a signatory to international conventions against the use of chemical weapons,” said Arad, so the legal basis for intervention by the West was somewhat shoddy. “You cannot say that Assad violated an international convention Syria is not signed onto.” Assad, therefore, sees no reason not to use such weapons against anyone he feels threatens his rule.

As a result, Arad said, there is a real possibility that any country that takes on Assad may find itself mired in a very ugly situation. “I find it hard to believe that intervention will bring about a substantially better situation,” he said. “The best thing now would be for Obama to carefully bring the crisis to an end, without creating negative ramifications in the region and the world, whether before or after an attack,” Arad added.

ADL’s Foxman: Obama Asked Us to Help on Syria – Jewish World – News – Israel National News.

ADL National Director Abraham Foxman

Flash 90

Abraham Foxman, who heads the US-based Anti-Defamation League, told IDF Radio Monday morning that elements in the White House asked the ADL and other Jewish groups to help it in the campaign to get congressional approval for a military strike on Syria.

“In the same way that Secretary Kerry and senior Obama Administration officials asked for our help in advancing the peace process, so they asked for support about a strike on Syria – by means of a phone call and direct requests,” Foxman said.

“Congressmen have been calling our people in the last few days and we have told them what our position is. In the course of Rosh Hashanna, and as Yom Kippur approaches, too, rabbis in several synagogues will urge the congregation to put pressure on members of Congress.”

The ADL expressed its strong support for Obama’s plans in Syria Tuesday, saying, “We welcome President Obama’s demonstration of U.S. leadership in responding to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.”

“Congress should act swiftly to add its voice to hold President Bashar al-Assad accountable for the wanton slaughter of his own citizens,” said Foxman and Curtiss-Lusher, ADL National Chair.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has also been enlisted to rally support for Obama’s plan to strike Syria.

AIPAC released a statement in which it urged Congress “to grant the President the authority he has requested to protect America’s national security interests and dissuade the Syrian regime’s further use of unconventional weapons.”

“The civilized world cannot tolerate the use of these barbaric weapons, particularly against an innocent civilian population including hundreds of children,” said AIPAC.

The willingness of Jewish groups to assist Obama in this matter has come under fire from some Jewish leaders.

Attorney Mark Langfan, Chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel, wrote in an Arutz Sheva op-ed that “AIPAC is courting disaster in actively lobbying for the Congressional resolution for a US Syria attack.”

“If, G-d-forbid, US body-bags come back from Obama’s misadventure, the Jews of America should expect virulent anti-Semitism as a direct result of the ill-advised lobbying,” he explained. “American Jews got wrongly accused of pushing America into the Iraqi war, despite the fact that the then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon openly warned Bush against it. AIPAC has positioned Jews as the scapegoat once more.”

Syrian, Hizballah rockets for Palestinian anti-Israel proxy-reprisals. Syrian Sukhoi bombers over Cyprus.

First Iron Dome for Jerusalem

The Syrian and Hizballah armies Sunday, Sept. 8, finished supplying rockets to dozens of Palestinian groups, some invented ad hoc, and deploying them on the Syrian and Lebanese borders facing Israel, debkafile’s military sources disclose. An array of Katyushas, Grads and Fajr-5s, with ranges of up to 70 kilometers, is now in place. This development prompted the first deployment in the Jerusalem region Sunday night of an Israeli anti-missile Iron Dome battery.

The information reaching Israeli intelligence is that the newly-armed Palestinian groups fully intend targeting the Israeli capital, following the example of Hamas, which aimed missiles from the Gaza Strip at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in November 2012.
In his interview to PBS’s Charlie Rose Show airing Monday, Bashar Assad spoke of “people aligned to Syria” carrying out “some kind of retaliation” for an American attack.

It now turns out that he intends using pro-Syrian and amorphous Palestinian groups as his instruments of retaliation, while at the same time disavowing responsibility for their actions.
In the south, likeminded Hamas and Jihad Islami groups in the Gaza Strip may try and join the rocket offensive against Israel. It will be hard for them to stand aside and watch, although Egypt’s counterterrorism offensive in Sinai is cutting into their resources.

The Israeli government’s assurances, last heard from Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon Sunday, that the Israeli public must carry on as usual – because running into “the full might of the IDF” will deter “anyone” thinking of hitting back at Israel – sharply contrasted with the Syrian and Hizballah preparations for proxy reprisals by Palestinians.

The minister sounded more credible when he said in the same breath: “We are ready for all the consequences – either of a US attack on Syria, or the absence of an attack. Whichever is decided we will be affected.”

The IDF’s high command could not miss the fact that the four Grad rocket attack from Lebanon on northern Israel’s Western Galilee took place on Aug. 22, the day after the chemical attack on eastern Damascus. It was meant as a warning from Damascus and its Hizballah ally for Israel to stay out of the Syrian conflict or else allied Palestinian groups would unleash their missiles in earnest.

For public consumption, Israeli officials pretended that the four rockets were fired by a vague “global Jihad” group, to disguise the truth that a pro-Syrian Palestinian group was in fact responsible.
Israel is not alone in putting an upbeat gloss on the facts.
Last Monday, Sept. 2, two Syrian Mig-29 fighters flew over the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus, where American and French warplanes are waiting for the signal to go into action against Syria. It took the British Ministry of Defense a week to disclose that a pair of armed RAF Typhoons was scrambled to intercept the Syrian intruders, forcing them to turn tail before they entered Cypriot air space.

Amid the hush from London surrounding the incident, the Syrian air force tried its luck a second time Sunday, Sept. 8. This time two Sukhoi (Su-24) bombers flew over Akrotiri.
Those signals from Damascus ought to open the eyes of the optimists who are counting on Syria and its allies to avoid responding to a potential American attack.

Syrian, Iranian officials head to Russia as US strike looms | The Times of Israel.

Talks will focus on all-encompassing discussion of current situation in Syria, says Russian Foreign Ministry

By Times of Israel staff and AP September 9, 2013, 6:45 am

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, welcomes Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, left, in Moscow, Monday, Feb. 25, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Ivan Sekretarev)

Syrian and Iranian officials are headed to Moscow on Monday to discuss a possible US-led strike on the Assad regime, in response to its reported use of chemical weapons in an attack near Damascus on August 21.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem is due to meet with his counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, while Iranian Deputy FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian plans to meet with Russian Deputy FM Mikhail Bogdanov and other top officials.

“They [the talks] will focus on an all-encompassing discussion of all the aspects of the current situation in Syria and around it,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Russia has remained a staunch ally of the Assad regime, refusing to end cooperation and vehemently opposing any military action in the country, which has put it at odds with the United States.

Moscow has made it clear it is unconvinced the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, calling such claims “utter nonsense” and urging the US to present proof to the UN Security Council.

The visits come days after a G-20 summit hosted in St-Petersburg ended with world leaders divided over a course of action.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met briefly with US President Barack Obama at the summit, but the two failed to agree.

“We remained unconvinced by each other. But there is a dialogue, we hear each other and understand the arguments. I disagree with him, with his arguments, he disagrees with mine, but we hear [each other] and try to analyze [arguments],” Putin was quoted as saying.

The US, citing intelligence reports, said sarin gas was used in the August 21 attack outside Damascus, and that 1,429 people died, including 426 children. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which collects information from a network of anti-regime activists, says it has so far only been able to confirm 502 dead.

The attack caused an international uproar and prompted Obama to seek Congressional approval of a military strike against Assad’s regime.

The Obama administration has been making a big push to rally members of Congress and the international community to support a US-led strike against the Syrian regime. Lawmakers are this week to consider a resolution authorizing the “limited and specified use” of US armed forces against Syria for no more than 90 days and barring American ground troops from combat.

The White House asserted Sunday that a “common-sense test” rather than “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence” makes the Syrian government responsible for the chemical weapons attack.

As part of a major push to win the backing of a divided Congress and skeptical American public, Obama’s top aides made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to press the case for “targeted, limited consequential action to deter and degrade” Assad’s capabilities “to carry out these terrible attacks again.”

“I call on members of Congress to come together and stand up for the kind of world we want to live in,” he said in a weekly radio address on Saturday, asserting that the “country will be stronger if we act together, and our actions will be more effective.”

The Syrian regime has consistently denied using chemical weapons. Syrian President Bashar Assad, most recently in an interview to PBS, excerpts of which were made public on Sunday, said there was no evidence his forces has used such weapons.

Speaking on the phone with PBS from Syria, interviewer Charlie Rose said Assad denied his army had any chemical weapons:

“He denied that he knew there was a chemical attack, notwithstanding what has been said and notwithstanding the videotape. He said there’s not enough evidence to make a conclusive judgment. He would not say even… even though I read him the lead paragraph of The New York Times today in the story about their chemical weapons supply. And he said I cannot confirm or deny that we do have them. He did, however, say that if in fact we do have them — and I am not going to say Yes or No — they are in centralized control and no one else has access to them.”

According to Rose, the most important thing Assad said is that “there has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people.” Rather, the Syrian president once again suggested opposition troops were behind the attack.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said in response that the evidence against Assad “speaks for itself.”

PIPES: Forget Syria, target Iran – Washington Times.

Tehran is a much greater threat to American lives

Here’s advice to the members of Congress as they are asked to endorse an American-led attack on the government of Syria: Start your consideration by establishing priorities, clarifying what matters most to the country. The Obama administration rightly points to two urgent matters: stopping the Iranian nuclear buildup and maintaining the security of Israel. To these, I add a third: re-establishing the U.S. deterrent credibility laid low by President Obama himself.

Note that this list conspicuously does not mention the Syrian regime’s chemical arsenal (the largest in the world) or its recent use. That’s because these pale in horror and in danger by comparison with the nuclear weapons now under construction in Iran. Also, the attack in Ghouta, Syria, on Aug. 21 was appalling, but not worse than killing a hundred times more civilians through other means, including torture. Further, that attack breached multiple international conventions, but surely no one expects antiquated “limited strikes” to restrain desperate dictators.

How best, then, to achieve the real priorities concerning Iran, Israel and U.S. deterrence? Several options exist. Going from most violent to least, they include:

1. Knock off the Assad regime. Attractive in itself, especially because it takes out Tehran’s No. 1 ally and disrupts supply lines to Hezbollah, this scenario opens a can of worms: anarchy in Syria, foreign intervention by neighbors, the prospect of al Qaeda-connected Islamists taking over in Damascus, hostilities against Israel on the hitherto-quiet Golan Heights, and the dispersal of the regime’s chemical weapons to terrorist organizations. Overthrowing President Bashar Assad threatens to recapitulate the elimination of long-standing dictators of Iraq and Libya in 2003 and 2011, respectively, leading to years, or even decades, of instability and violence. Worse yet, this outcome could rejuvenate the otherwise dying career of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the bully of Turkey, currently nearly overwhelmed by his missteps.

2. Bust the regime’s chops without overthrowing it — the Obama administration’s proposed approach. This scenario takes us no less into the unknown: Evidence exists that the Assad regime does not worry about the U.S.-led “punishment,” but already plans to use chemicals again, perhaps against civilians, as does Tehran against American targets. Further, as I have pointed out, a limited strike can lead to “violence against Israel, an activation of sleeper cells in Western countries, or heightened dependence on Tehran. Surviving the strikes also permits Mr. Assad to boast that he defeated the United States.” This step risks almost as much as overthrowing him without the benefit of getting rid of him, making it the worst of these three options.

3. Do nothing. This scenario has several disadvantages: letting Mr. Assad get away with his chemical attack, eroding Mr. Obama’s credibility after his declaring the use of chemicals a “red line,” and strengthening the hard-liners in Iran. However, it has the even greater advantages of not further inflaming an already combustible war theater, maintaining the strategically beneficial standoff between regime and rebels, and most importantly, not distracting Washington from the really important country — Iran.

By all accounts, the mullahs in Tehran are getting ever closer to the point where they at will can order nuclear bombs to be made and readied for use. Unlike the use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, this prospect is a matter of the most direct and vital personal concern to Americans, for it could lead to an electromagnetic pulse attack on the electrical grid, suddenly returning the country to a 19th-century economy and possibly a couple of hundred million fatalities.

Such prospects make the methods by which Syrians kill each other a decidedly less vital matter for Congress than Iranian plans to bring the United States to its knees. In this light, note that Mr. Obama has followed his fellow Democrat, Bill Clinton, in a readiness to use force where American interests precisely are not vitally involved — Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Libya and now Syria. Need one really argue that American troops be deployed only to protect their own country?

While the Saudi foreign minister and the Arab League haughtily demand that “the international community” do its duty and stop the bloodshed in Syria, this American suggests that Sunni Muslims who wish to protect their kin in Syria do so with their own plentiful petrodollars and large armies.

In this light, I recommend that Congress reject the sideshow proffered by the administration and instead pass a resolution endorsing and encouraging force against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum and author of three books on Syria.

Assad hints he is weighing a secret new US proposal pushed by Europeans.

Bashar Assad interviewed by PBS

In an interview with Charlie Rose to be aired by US PBS Monday night, Sept. 9, Syrian President Bashar Assad denied he had anything to do with the chemical attack last month near Damascus. He also suggested that he was not necessarily expecting the United States to intervene…

This remark, say debkafile’s intelligence sources, was the most telling phrase in the interview. It was a hint that the situation had opened up and that something new was afoot.
Our sources report that the Obama administration apparently delayed military action against Syria to put before the Syrian ruler a secret new proposal for discussing an end to the crisis. The European powers are pushing hard for this option. So Bashar Assad may be holding the key to whether or not the US goes forward with an attack on Syria. On the other hand, the door on US military action has not yet closed.
The slowed-down momentum toward military action was also noticeable in the remarks heard from US Secretary of State John Kerry after he lobbied European leaders to back US action against Syria.

Before arriving in London Sunday, he commented: “There is no decision by our president [about turning back to the UN Security Council].”  He will “take under advisement our friends’ proposal” to wait for the UN experts report on its findings from the Aug. 21 chemical attack.

The story carried Sunday by Germany’s Bild am Sonntag paper also appeared to be pushing the Obama administration back from precipitate action against Syria. The paper cited the BND intelligence service as saying that President Assad may not have personally authorized the chemical weapons attack. To support this theory, the paper noted that for the last four and a half months, Syrian commanders asked the presidential palace to allow them to use chemical weapons, but were always denied.

According to the opposite theory posited by the same German paper, the BND had plenty of evidence of Assad government responsibility for the chemical attack, including a phone call its eavesdroppers intercepted in which a Hizballah official told the Iranian Embassy in Damascus that Assad had ordered the attack.

This may be taken as a double signal from Berlin to President Barack Obama, which offered evidence going two ways: leaving Assad personally off the hook for the chemical attack, if Obama chooses to follow through on the secret talks for a deal; while, on the other hand, providing enough evidence to justify military intervention.
debkafile’s sources note that in the Charlie Rose interview, Assad does not explain why he may not be expecting the US to intervene in his country, nor does he make any mention of secret diplomatic initiatives on his desk. But his words indicate he may be open to suggestions – hence his insistent denial that “he had anything to do with the chemical weapons attack last month near Damascus.”
Interestingly, he didn’t deny that the attack happened – only that he was involved in any way. He then challenged Washington: “The administration should provide what it says is mounting evidence that Assad – and not the rebels fighting to oust him – used chemical weapons,” he reportedly told Rose.
With so many balls up in the air, debkafile’s Washington sources postulate three likely developments

1. The secret diplomatic negotiations going through European middlemen will progress;
2. They will break down for some reason;
Or, 3. President Obama will order the US military assault on Syria to go forward, notwithstanding the talks.

As far as Israel is concerned, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon are still holding their cards very close to their vests. So the security- political inner cabinet which sat Sunday night to discuss the situation ended without reaching any decisions.

Ya’alon said later: “We are ready for all eventualties – either from a US attack on Syria or its abstention from an attack. Whichever is decided is bound to affect us. Our neighbors, especially the Syrian regime, understand that anyone challenging us will meet the full might of the IDF.”
The minister added that the guidelines to Israeli citizens were unchanged: to carry on normally and go ahead with their plans for the holidays.
What happened next was the deployment for the first time in Jerusalem of an anti-missile Iron Dome battery.

Defense minister ridicules notion of democracy in Mideast | The Times of Israel.

In remarkable address, Moshe Ya’alon decries attempts to establish Palestinian state, says flatly that Assad used nerve gas, warns Syria not to cross Israel’s red lines

Moshe Ya’alon (photo credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO/Flash90)

In a remarkably candid speech in which he ridiculed the notion of democracy dawning in the Middle East, and denounced efforts toward Palestinian statehood, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Sunday also emphasized that Israel would respond forcefully to any Syrian attack and asserted that Syrian President Bashar Assad was behind a recent lethal chemical strike on civilians outside Damascus.

Israel will stay out of the conflict in Syria “unless the red lines we’ve set down are transgressed,” Ya’alon said. “Our neighbors in Syria realize that if they challenge us, they’ll meet the force of the IDF.”

Israel has asserted that the transfer of nonconventional or other “game-changing” weapons from Syria or Iran to Hezbollah would be seen as an act of war and would elicit a response. Several alleged Israeli airstrikes in Syria over the past year have been seen as responses to such actions.

In a broad lecture that focused on Western misconceptions about the Middle East, the defense minister confirmed that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons against its own citizens and said that Israel would be affected — whether or not US President Barack Obama opted to follow through with plans to attack Syria.

“We are preparing for the consequences of action and the consequences of inaction,” Ya’alon said at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s security conference in Herzliya. “Every such decision has consequences for us.”

He confirmed that earlier in the day he had participated in another in a string of security assessments about the situation in Syria and added, “The bottom line was, as we expressed before Rosh Hashanah, that whoever planned on going on vacation over the holidays can carry on with his plans, and in my estimation they will go ahead unhindered.”

Ya’alon called the Obama administration’s plans to strike in Syria — which, he said, is the second-strongest supporter of global terrorism, after Iran — a “punishment against the regime of Bashar Assad,” and confirmed that the Syrian ruler had “crudely used chemical weapons against his own citizens.”

The White House claims that over 1,400 people were killed in the August 21 attack.

The bulk of Ya’alon’s talk, however, was devoted to setting out his broader vision of the region, and it focused on the danger of clinging to preconceived notions. For instance, he claimed that the uprisings in the Arab world began on the day in December 2003 that US soldiers pulled the bedraggled Saddam Hussein from his hole and not with Mohammad Boazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia in 2010.

Surging as far back in time as the Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916, which dictated the eventual parceling of the Middle East among the world powers, Ya’alon said that just as the nation state was right for Europe at the time and wrong for the Middle East, so, too, is democracy today — as ushered in at the ballot box — wrong for the region.

Advocating for democracy, he said, in a region where death is frequently valued over life, reeked of “ignorance, naiveté, wishful thinking and, no less important, patronization.”

He also voiced outright surprise that, despite the upheaval in the Arab world, there was still a movement to push for the founding of a Palestinian state.

“One of the most incredible things in a period when the notion of the nation state is collapsing before our eyes is that there are those who are trying to advance, in one way or another, the founding of yet another nation-state — even as it remains unclear how the people of Jenin are connected to the people of Hebron, and uncertain that there is a common denominator between those in Judea and Samaria and those in Gaza,” he said. That section of the speech was the more remarkable because his own prime minister and Likud party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is explicitly committed to a two-state solution, and recently reentered negotiations with the Palestinians, brokered by the US, aimed at precisely that outcome.

Ya’alon also touched on the 9-11 attacks, which he said had changed the perception of terrorism: from a limited criminal act requiring a police response to an armed assault and an act of war. He further praised the Patriot Act and the ensuing international cooperation against terror and said that, had the international cooperation in 2001 been similar to what it is today, “I can say with near-confidence that the 9-11 attacks would not have happened.”

His primary message, though — the one with which he began and ended — related to an ever-changing reality and the way it often clashes with fixed conceptions about the Middle East: “We must truly ask ourselves every day what has changed, so that we remain relevant, so that we don’t prepare for the wars of the past and the challenges of the past but rather to be able to deal with the challenges of the present and the future.”