WarSclerotic

“Al-Qaida is on our border on the Golan Heights, Hezbollah is in the north, and ISIS [the Islamic State group] is coming closer from both the east and the north,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday at an international anti-terrorism conference hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. He said a schism was developing in the Middle East.

“Old hatreds — Shiite against Shiite, but primarily Shiite against Sunni, Sunni against Sunni — all come bursting from subterranean layers of history and frustration. And they all have one common goal. The goal is [to] establish a new Islamist dominion, first in the Middle East and in their warped thinking, throughout the world,” Netanyahu said.

“They all agree that they have to establish a caliphate. They all disagree who should be the caliph.”

Netanyahu also said that Israel was playing its part against ISIS, but did not provide details.

The prime minister said all the extremist Islamic groups employ the same methods: First, they use terrorism against their own people, such as in the wholesale slaughters in Iran, Iraq, and recently in Gaza, and then they turn against Israel and the West.

Netanyahu addressed the challenges facing a democracy fighting terrorism, specifically the need for precision strikes against the terrorists to minimize harm to innocent civilians and other collateral damage. He noted that the requisite technology was “very, very expensive.”

In addition, he said, Israel had to defend itself against missile fire on its own civilian population.

“With the help of the United States for which we’re deeply grateful, we developed [the Iron Dome] system to protect ourselves against this terror, these terror attacks from the sky. And that too is very, very expensive,” he said.

In the end, he said, the greatest guarantee of Israel’s future is the strength of the IDF and the strength of the people, both of which proved themselves in the most recent operation.

Netanyahu said the U.S. should be congratulated for leading the international coalition against extremist terror groups, but that the issue of Iran’s nuclearization should not be brushed aside.

“All you have to imagine is what would have happened if on 9/11 al-Qaida had nuclear weapons. You know they would have used them against New York and against Washington. It’s unassailable. Once they have massive power, they will unleash all their violence,” he said.

“And all you have to imagine is what would have happened if al-Qaida today had access to chemical weapons in Syria. … What would happen if the terrorist regime in Iran will have weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons?”

Netanyahu warned against cooperation with Shiite Iran in the fight against the Islamic State.

“I think it’s crucial not to let the fight against Sunni extremism make us forget the danger of Shiite extremism. They are two sides of the same coin. We don’t have to strengthen one to weaken the other. My policy is: Weaken both and most importantly, don’t allow any of them to get weapons of mass destruction,” Netanyahu said.

Israel’s concern that the U.S. focus on ISIS will distract it from more serious threats was also expressed by Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz in The New York Times on Thursday, where he was quoted as saying that Islamic State “is a five-year problem. A nuclear Iran is a 50-year problem … with far greater impact.”

Despite concerns that the ISIS problem would eclipse the Iranian nuclear issue, Netanyahu stressed that Israel was standing behind Obama’s plan to hunt down Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

“Israel fully supports President Obama’s call for a united action against ISIS,” Netanyahu said.

“All civilized countries should stand together in the fight against radical terrorism that sweeps across the Middle East that sweeps across the world. And we are playing our part in this continued effort. Some of the things are known, some things are less known.”

Obama told Americans on Wednesday he had authorized U.S. air strikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against the Islamic State.

Netanyahu said the fight against ISIS might strengthen ties between Israel and Sunni U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia.

“Now the fight against Islamist terrorism has created new alliances in the Middle East, because many Sunni Arab states recognize that the threat of Iran’s aggression and its radical Shiite proxies pose a fundamental danger to them, as does fundamentalist Sunni terrorism,” he said.

“As a result of this they are re-evaluating their relationship with Israel and they understand that it is not their enemy, rather their ally in the fight against this common enemy. And I believe this presents an opportunity for cooperation and perhaps an opportunity for peace.”