Israel acts on chemical war fears

Fears that Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile may be turned against Israel have led to a surge of diplomatic activity in Jerusalem, only days after a complicated and inconclusive general election result.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held an emergency meeting of his Cabinet resulting in National Security Adviser, Yaakov Amidror, being sent to Moscow to seek Russian help in pressuring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to keep the weapons secure.

Cynics may suggest this is a ploy by Netanyahu to hold his embattled coalition together, and in particular to weaken opposition to forming an alliance with the right wing Jewish Home Party. However, it does seem that after months of inconclusive fighting, the two-year-long civil war in Syria might be reaching a decisive – and dangerous – stage.

Moscow is one of Assad’s few remaining allies, but in a significant development over the weekend, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that the Syrian President’s hold on power was nearing its end.

Assad had made a serious mistake in not seeking negotiations with more moderate opponents at an earlier stage, and it was now too late, Medvedev was reported as saying. “Every day his [Assad’s] chances of survival are growing slimmer.”

This raises the possibility of two nightmare scenarios. One that if Assad feels he cannot win by conventional means he may order the use of chemical weapons against the forces of his opponents. He has said he would not do this unless the West entered the war on the side of the opposition, but it would be simple enough for him to manufacture an excuse if his situation becomes desperate.

The second – and this really concerns Israel – is that the chemical weapons fall into the hands of militant elements of the opposition, including Al-Qaida; or Hezbollah, which fights on the side of the Syrian Government. Unconfirmed reports out of Syria suggest a battle is taking place between Government troops and an Al-Qaida led faction near the largest chemical weapons base of the Syrian Army outside Aleppo.

Writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, commentator Alex Fishman said that if chemical weapons were brought into Lebanon [presumably by Hezbollah] Israel would not hesitate to use military force to eliminate them, a move that would certainly plunge the Middle East into the biggest crisis since the 1972 Yom Kippur War.