For the past two weeks the Syrian conflict has put the Jewish state on an emotional roller coaster. It began with the massive chemical attack which occurred four hours’ drive from Tel Aviv and continued with the debate over military intervention which prompted Bashar al-Assad and his allies to threaten retaliation against Israel.
The Assad regime, Hezbollah and their loyalists in Gaza have tens of thousands of rockets pointed at Israel, with the trigger for much of that arsenal located in Tehran. Combine that with Assad’s apparent willingness to gas his own capital and you’ve got enough of a threat to send Israelis scrambling to grab gas masks and ready their bomb shelters.
The tensions in Israel culminated in one of the Israel Defense Force’s largest antimissile battery deployments and a reserve call-up. Those tensions dropped almost immediately — along with the jaws of many Israelis — when President Obama announced on Aug. 31 that he would refer the decision to strike Syria to Congress.
Obama’s decision has given Israel a window to contemplate the risks and benefits of foreign intervention. But the frenzy that plucked people off the beach, out of coffee shops and into gas-mask lines shouldn’t fool anyone.
Israelis understand the risks of even limited intervention more than most, and are willing to brave those dangers to achieve the greater goal of smashing the Iranian axis and recalibrating stability in the region.
As Washington debates ground troops, time frames and end-games, Israel has found creative ways to get the message across to its enemies that even a minor provocation could result in their outright destruction.
On Aug. 22, anti-Assad jihadists in Lebanon fired four rockets into northern Israel, causing minor damage and no casualties. The Israeli army responded the following day with an airstrike against a secular, pro-Assad Palestinian militant group a few kilometers from the bunker of Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, in southern Beirut.
This peculiar choice of targets wasn’t a mistake. It was a message to the Assad regime that any provocations-by-proxy would be met with a heavy-handed response.
For Israel there is no such thing as a “limited strike” or “punishment” when it comes to deterrence, and Israeli leaders have openly threatened to topple the Assad regime or destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure in Lebanon.
These aren’t empty threats. Israeli fighter-bombers are as trained in carrying out multiple strikes as they are in evading Syria’s sophisticated air defense systems. Adding to the punch are Israel’s unparalleled intelligence capabilities in Syria — which allowed it to insert a Jewish spy named Eli Cohen to become chief adviser to Syria’s minister of defense in the 1960s; to uncover its alleged ultra-secret nuclear reactor in 2007; and to intercept initial communications apparently depicting Assad regime involvement in the Aug. 21 chemical attacks in Damascus.
For now, this deterrence is all that is stopping Assad and Hezbollah from drawing Israel into the conflict. Both parties failed to retaliate against reported Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah-destined weapons convoys in Syria since January, or the testing of a dummy ballistic missile in the Mediterranean on Sept. 3.
That test set off Russian alarms over a possible cruise missile strike, but the silence in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran could be heard all the way from Jerusalem.
The prevalent assessment in the Israeli government is that Hezbollah and the Assad regime will not draw Israel into the conflict in response to limited foreign intervention. Iran needs Hezbollah’s arsenal intact to respond to a possible Israeli assault against its nuclear program, while Assad needs his military for the civil war.
But there is still plenty of room for miscalculations that could flip a limited U.S. strike into a regional conflagration. Assad’s proxies in Lebanon and Gaza have threatened to fire rockets at Israel in response to any strike, while Hezbollah is reportedly weighing the opening of its own front if it appears that intervention will threaten the Syrian regime’s survival.
Such a move could complicate any American military campaign and possibly save the Assad regime — Hezbollah’s main arms supplier and political guarantor — from imminent destruction.
Putting aside the cold calculations of warfare and strategy, the gassing of innocent families has evoked sympathies in Israel that surpass a decades-long rivalry with their Syrian neighbors. Bitter memories of the Holocaust still dominate Israel’s national psyche and continue to fuel the country’s efforts to maintain its powerful military.
As the fate of the region hangs in the balance of the U.S. Congress debate, Israelis will be watching, fully aware of the risks, and hoping for an American strike.
Daniel Nisman is the Middle East intelligence manager at Max Security Solutions, a geopolitical and security risk consulting firm.