Fighting the Next War
By Caroline Glick
Real Clear Politics
Last Friday, Haaretz's military commentator Ze'ev Schiff accused the Barak and
Sharon governments of responsibility for last summer's war. As Schiff put it,
since the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, "a threatening
system [comprised of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran] arose [on Israel's northern
border], which required a preemptive strike. The aversion to conducting such a
strike eventually caused the war."
Schiff's analysis is correct. But since it stops short of drawing lessons for
the present dangers, it is largely useless. Today, due to the
Olmert-Livni-Peretz government's failure in the last war, we stand at the brink
of the next one. And in the next war, the main enemy will be Syria, which will
fight in coordination with Hizbullah and the Palestinians and under Iranian
guidance.
Syria has been openly preparing for war since the last summer. And in the space
of the past week alone, the Syrians twice announced their intention to attack
Israel. On Monday, Syria's Propaganda Minister Moshen Bilal threatened that if
Israel doesn't fully implement the Arab plan which calls for its retreat to the
1949 armistice lines and acceptance of millions of Arab immigrants, Syria will
go to war. On Wednesday, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad said, "We always prepare
ourselves. Israel is a fierce enemy. We have seen nothing from it but harm."
A constructive Israeli policy for contending with Syria must be based on a clear
understanding of both Syria's interests and our own.
First there are Syria's war preparations. Many note optimistically that Syria
has not moved its tanks to the border. But why would it?
Syria has no intention of fighting a conventional war against Israel. The war
that Syria is planning will bear greater similarity to the insurgency in Iraq
and Hizbullah's war last summer than to Syria's previous wars with Israel.
In the midst of last summer's war, Assad announced the formation of a new terror
force tasked with infiltrating and attacking targets on the Golan Heights. The
Syrian order of battle also includes a highly trained commando division; a
massive artillery force capable of wreaking destruction on the Golan Heights and
the Galilee; Scud ballistic missiles with ranges covering all of Israel; and
chemical warheads that can be fitted on the Scuds.
This week CBN broadcast satellite footage of three hardened Syrian missile
facilities outside of Homs and Hama. Syria aims to bleed Israel in order to
force subsequent Israeli political concessions.
Syria has good reasons to go to war with Israel. Its forced departure from
Lebanon in 2005 humiliated and weakened the regime both politically and
economically. The regime views an achievement on the Golan Heights as a way to
make up for the shame.
Moreover, Hizbullah's achievements in last summer's war challenge Syria to
demonstrate that it too can humiliate Israel. It is also notable that June 11
will mark the fortieth anniversary of Israel's liberation of the Golan Heights.
Rather than contend with the Syrian challenge, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz
government has opted to ignore it. In his appearance before the Knesset's
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
said, "We have no intention of attacking Syria."
He added, "The assessment of all of Israel's assessment bodies is that Syria is
deploying defensively in line with a scenario of an attack against them. But we
are also preparing for a situation where we are surprised."
The gist of Olmert's statements is that he is unwilling to decide how to deal
with the Syrian threat. He would rather be "surprised" by the Syrians than
prevent surprises by crafting an Israeli policy that would defend Israel's
interests and preempt Syrian aggression.
The Israeli Left maintains that the only way to prevent war is by holding peace
talks with Syria that will lead to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
But former national security adviser Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland explained in
a recent lecture at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that under current
conditions, in contrast to the Left's protestations, an Israeli withdrawal from
the Golan Heights, even in return for a peace treaty, would increase the chance
of war with Syria, and decrease Israel's chances of winning the war. Syria would
have little reason to abide by the agreement after an Israeli withdrawal and
Israel would lack international support to enforce the agreement after Syria
breached it.
Rather than preemptively surrendering, Israel's strategic aims should be to
degrade Syria's capacity to harm it and to change the Syrian regime's assessment
of the attractiveness of attacking Israel.
Any plan to reduce Syria's capacity for aggression against Israel should
properly begin with Schiff's analysis of last summer's war in Lebanon. Given the
nature of the gathering threat, it makes sense to consider a preemptive strike
on Syria's terror training camps, its missile sites and artillery bases. Such a
strike should be guided by the lessons from the last war regarding the
limitations of air power. Air strikes had limited results against hardened
targets and they exposed Israel's flank to anti-Israel propagandists in the
media war.
Changing Syria's cost-benefit analysis of war with Israel involves going beyond
the military realm. To impact Syria's decision-making loop, Israel must also
consider the economic and political realities facing the Assad regime.
Syria is an economic basket case. In a study of the Syrian economy published
this week, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) noted that since the
US-led invasion of Iraq, some one million Iraqis have fled to Syria. Rather than
stimulate economic growth, due to the corruption and economic incompetence of
the regime, the population inflow has simply caused massive inflation. Aside
from this, Syria's oil revenues are steadily declining. US and EU economic
sanctions instituted in recent years have made it impossible for Syria to
receive financial credits or significantly expand its international trade. Today
the regime can barely provide basic services to the population.
Syria's economic weakness undermines the regime's political stability. Another
factor undermining that stability is the restive Kurdish minority in northeast
Syria. The Kurds, who comprise twenty percent of Syria's overall population,
already staged an uprising against the regime in May 2004.
Today, Syria's Kurds are inspired by their brethren in Iraq to work to achieve
their rights. Like the Iraqi Kurds, the Syrian Kurds, who have good relations
with their Arab compatriots, do not demand independence. Rather they seek to
transform Syria from a centralized totalitarian state into a federated
democracy.
Two weeks ago a conference of Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish and Iranian Kurds took
place in Irbil, Iraq. Massoud Barzani, the President of Iraqi Kurdistan, spelled
out the Kurdish view of Israel in an interview with Al Arabiya.
In his words, "If [Iraq] establish[es] relations [with Israel] we will do so
publicly. There is no reason for these relations to be kept secret, because we
are neither afraid nor ashamed of such relations."
Barzani attacked the Iranians, Hizbullah and Palestinians for supporting
Israel's destruction, explaining, "I am against driving Israel into the sea….
This policy is wrong, illogical, and unreasonable. Why annihilate a people?"
Sherkoh Abbas, who heads the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria from his home
in the US, participated in the conference. In a recent conversation he
explained, "Most Syrian Kurds…have views similar to President Barzani. As Kurds
we can say that we have no issues with Israel; in fact we are against the desire
of the Ba'ath party, the Muslim Brotherhood or terrorists to destroy Israel…
"The Kurds did not suffer by the hands of Israelis or Jews. All or most of their
sufferings were caused by Arabs, Persians and Turks. In Syria, the Ba'ath regime
Arabized the Kurdish region, stripped 300,000 Kurds of Syrian citizenship, and
killed many Kurds.…. We do not want to fight for the Syrian regime."
The Kurds' desire to replace the current regime with a democratic federal
government is backed by the Syrian Reform Party, an exile group with strong ties
to the population in Syria. Farid Ghadry, a Washington-based Syrian exile who
heads the party, believes that the Kurdish federal plan is the best way to bring
freedom to Syria.
The interests of the Kurds and the other regime opponents align with Israel's
interests in many ways. First, Israel will benefit greatly if they achieve their
aim of democratizing Syria and protecting minority rights by decentralizing
authority while maintaining the territorial integrity of the country.
Centralized governments throughout the Arab world are the primary fulminators of
Arab hatred of Israel. These regimes require a constant drumbeat of incitement
against Israel to deflect their people's attention from their failure to provide
basic services. Decentralized governments would have difficulty blaming the Jews
for their failures.
There is widespread fear in Israel that if Assad's regime is overthrown, it will
be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. This makes sense given that for the past
30 years, the Ba'athists ensured that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only other
force in the country with organizational and financial means. But even so,
strengthening the Kurds - who oppose jihad - will counterbalance the Muslim
Brotherhood, whether or not the regime falls.
Turkey, too, fears Kurdish separatism. But Israeli support for the advancement
of legitimate Syrian Kurdish rights through the cultivation of democratic
federalism rather than secession, should not concern Ankara.
One of the reasons the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is taking the Arab "peace
plan" seriously in spite of the fact that it is inherently hostile to Israel is
because the government is desperate to find allies against the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah
axis. The trouble with this gambit is that the Sunni countries involved in the
initiative act as the Iranian-Syrian-Lebanese-Palestinian axis's support network
against Israel. The Saudis and their colleagues have no interest in helping
Israel.
In contrast, the Kurds are natural allies for Israel with overlapping interests
and values. They would be happy to receive Israeli media and financial support.
And, if at the same time as Israel helped broadcast Kurdish language television
and radio into Syria, it also provided the Kurds with arms to defend themselves
against Syrian aggression, the move could potentially alter Syria's cost-benefit
analysis of war with Israel.
Even if the Syrians open hostilities, arming the Kurds would likely muddy the
waters in a manner that would cause serious harm to Syria's war-making capacity.
How well would Syria contend with the IDF if it were simultaneously trying to
put down a popular rebellion? And how long would the regime survive in the
aftermath of such a war?
Studying past wars is always worthwhile. But today we must prepare for the next
one.
There is an Israeli strategy for victory. If we conduct a military strike that
degrades Syria's ability to harm us while economically weakening the regime
still further and politically supporting an oppressed, large, pro-Israel
minority, perhaps we could avert war altogether.
