Defence minister hints Israel responsible for strike on Syria
Barak stops shy of admitting role in air attacks
MUNICH • Israel’s defence minister strongly signalled Sunday that his country was behind an airstrikes in Syria last week, telling a high-profile security conference that Israeli threats to take pre-emptive action against its enemies are not empty. “We mean it,” Ehud Barak declared.
Israel has not officially confirmed its planes attacked a site near Damascus, targeting ground-to-air missiles apparently heading for Lebanon, but its intentions have been beyond dispute. During the 22 months of civil war in Syria, Israeli leaders have repeatedly expressed concern that high-end weapons could fall into the hands of enemy Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militants.
For years, Israel has charged that Syrian President Bashar Assad and Iran have been arming Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war against Israel in 2006.
U.S. officials say the target was a convoy of sophisticated Russian SA-17 antiaircraft missiles. Deployed in Lebanon, they could have limited Israel’s ability to gather intelligence on its enemies from the air.
Over the weekend, Syrian TV broadcast video of the Wednesday attack site for the first time, showing destroyed vehicles and a damaged building identified as a scientific research centre. The U.S. officials said the airstrike hit both the building and the convoy.
In his comments Sunday in Munich, Barak came close to confirming that his country was behind the operation.
“I cannot add anything to what you have read in the newspapers about what happened in Syria several days ago,” Barak told the gathering of top diplomats and defence officials from around the world.
Then he went on, in heavily accented English, to say, “I keep telling frankly that we said — and that’s proof when we said something we mean it — we say that we don’t think it should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon.”
While Israel has remained officially silent on the airstrike, there seemed little doubt that Israel carried it out, especially given the confirmation from the U.S., its close ally.
Israel has a powerful air force equipped with U.S.made warplanes and has a history of carrying out air raids on hostile territory. In recent years, Israel has been blamed for an air raid in Syria in 2007 that apparently struck an unfinished nuclear reactor and an arms convoy in Sudan believed to be delivering weapons to Hamas.
The chief of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said Sunday that Tehran also hopes Syria will strike back against Israel.
Syrian opposition leaders and rebels have criticized Assad for not responding to the airstrike, calling it proof of his weakness and acquiescence to the Jewish state.