|
|
Follow the Middle East Forum
|
|
|
Please take a moment to
visit and log in at the subscriber
area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this
information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in
your area.
Holding
back al-Qaeda
  Be the first of
your friends to like this.
Will Israel be dragged into the Syrian conflict?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit this week to an IDF field
hospital where wounded Syrians are receiving treatment served to showcase
the Israeli humanitarian effort to respond to the crisis facing Syrian
civilians caught up in the ongoing conflict. Recent reports suggest that
the Israeli focus on events in southern Syria goes beyond purely
humanitarian concerns.
|
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits wounded Syrians at an IDF
field hospital near the Syrian border. (Image source: Israel Government
Press Office)
|
Increasing attention is being paid by Israeli planners to the buildup
of extreme Sunni Islamist forces close to the border with the Golan
Heights. There are indications that Israel has already begun to implement
a strategy intended to keep the jihadis from the border.
According to a report by prominent Israeli Middle East analyst Ehud
Ya'ari published recently at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, Israel is currently moving toward 'assuming a modest role in the
Syrian civil war.'
Ya'ari notes that the extent of Israel's humanitarian operation inside
Syria suggests that 'a system of communications and frequent contacts
have been established with the local rebel militias.'
The Israeli analyst reports that the background to such increased
engagement is the loss by the Assad regime of control of most of the
border area between southern Syria and the Golan Heights. Israeli
contacts with the rebel militias in this area would serve to facilitate
the latter acting as a de facto buffer against the jihadis.
This largely off-the-radar activity in the south forms part of a
broader Israeli concern at the increasingly prominent role played by
jihadi and Sunni Islamist elements in the Syrian rebellion.
An un-named senior IDF officer quoted in a recent article in Defense
News noted that 'Today, rebels control most of the area of the south
Golan Heights…Among rebel forces, the moderates are increasingly
exhausted while the radicals have become strengthened.'
He added that 'For the moment, they are not fighting us, but we know
their ideology. … It could be that, in the coming months, we could find
ourselves dragged into confrontation with them."
IDF Military Intelligence head Aviv Kochavi, meanwhile, in an address
at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on January 29
estimated that around 30,000 jihadi fighters were active in Syria.
Ya'ari, meanwhile, estimated the strength of Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS
(Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) as around 40,000 fighters.
These numbers are of particular interest in that they are considerably
in excess of the estimates made by most analysts of Syria concerning the
numbers of extreme jihadis present on the Syrian battlefield. While
accurate estimates of combatant forces on the Syrian rebel side are
notoriously hard to come by, the more usual estimate of the combined
strength of al-Qaeda linked forces in Syria would be between 15-20,000.
This suggests that Israeli estimates may take a somewhat broader
definition of what constitutes extreme salafi and al-Qaeda linked groups
than those made by western analysts.
A third openly salafi force plays a prominent role mainly in northern
Syria. This is the Ahrar al-Sham group, thought to number around 20,000
fighters. This group has no known links with the central leadership of
al-Qaeda. Yet it adheres to an extreme salafi ideology. One of its
leading members, Abu Khaled al-Suri, recently described himself as a
member of al-Qaeda.
If it is indeed the case that Israeli analysts would include Ahrar al
Sham and groups of this type under the rubric of potentially dangerous
Sunni jihadi forces (and there are good reasons to do so), then this has
interesting implications.
Ahrar al-Sham is a component part of the Islamic Front, which is the
largest single rebel formation, numbering over 60,000 fighters, and which
is the beneficiary of extensive aid from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. So if
Jerusalem regards this force as on a par with more obviously al-Qaeda
aligned groups, this is a significant point of contention between the two
main anti-Iran countries in the region – Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Israel's concerns regarding the Sunni jihadis are certainly not
limited to the border area. The al-Qaeda linked cell whose capture was
announced on January 22nd was apprehended while preparing to
enter northern Syria via Turkey for training purposes.
It has also not escaped Israel's attention that a de facto sovereign
jihadi -controlled zone now exists in eastern Syria's Raqqa province,
stretching into western Anbar province in Iraq.
Such an enclave has never existed in the Levant before. The jihadis
are busy fighting Assad and his Iranian backers now. But they are open in
their desire to engage also against Israel.
While close attention should be paid to Israel's concerns re the Sunni
jihadis and the consequent relationship with the rebels in the south,
there are also factors likely to militate against any broader Israeli
intervention into the Syrian war.
Firstly, the Iran-led regional bloc remains by far the most potent and
dangerous alliance challenging Israel at the present time. As Kohavi said
in his address: 'The new phenomenon of Global Jihad at our borders is
disturbing, but we shouldn't be confused. Our mortal enemy remains the
ever-strengthening axis of evil formed by Hezbollah, Syria and the
Iranian regime.'
This point, and the Iranian responsibility for events in Syria was
underlined by Netanyahu in his remarks made at the field hospital. The
Iran-led bloc includes paramilitary clients but is led by a powerful
state with nuclear ambitions. There is no parallel structure to this on
the Sunni jihadi side.
Secondly, unseen but unmistakable, the trauma of Israel's long
involvement in Lebanon remains written into the DNA of Israeli commanders
and planners and of the Israeli system as a whole. There is a very deep aversion
to anything that might look like interference in the internal processes
of neighboring states – particularly where this could involve Israeli
boots on the ground and hence loss of Israeli life.
This salient institutional memory will probably ensure that despite
its very real concerns, Israel's engagement against the Sunni jihadi
threat in southern Syria will remain as far as possible invisible, and on
a limited, deniable scale.
Yet this engagement is taking place. On a daily basis, a few
kilometers north-east of Tiberias, Israeli forces are involved in the
complex task of keeping al Qaeda at a safe distance from the Golan
Heights and the northern Galilee.
Jonathan Spyer is a
senior research fellow at the Global
Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and a
fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related
Topics: Arab-Israel conflict &
diplomacy, Syria
| Jonathan Spyer This
text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral
whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author,
date, place of publication, and original URL.
|
|
|
|
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment