Israel's Enemies Are at Loggerheads

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

In the summer of 1939 there was a little known war that took place on the Mongolian-Manchurian border, between the Soviet Red Army and the Imperial Japanese Army. Mongolia was at the time a Soviet satellite, while Manchuria, renamed Manchukuo, was a Japanese puppet state.

The fighting involved over 100,000 troops and  one thousand tanks and aircraft. Some 30,000-50,000 men were killed and wounded.

The famed journalist John Gunther, author of the classic work “Inside Asia,” published in 1939, quipped at the time that “the whole world was hoping that both sides would lose.” (Actually, in the climactic battle, at the end of August, the Japanese were defeated.)

This is probably the way most Israelis feel about both sides in the Syrian civil war. For that reason, among others, the country aims to stay out of Syria’s civil war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Israelis, despite some violence eroding security on the Golan Heights border area.

Obviously the Syrian regime itself is no friend of Israel’s. But many of the rebel groups are also opposed to non-Sunni governments in the region – including, of course, a Jewish one.

The Syrian Islamic Liberation Front is similar to the Muslim Brotherhood, while the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF) is an alliance of more hardline Islamist forces. Finally, there is Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with al-Qaeda. True, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is a moderate grouping, but they have been losing strength in relation to the other groups.

So, as far as Israel is concerned, all the combatants inside Syria oppose the Jewish state. And this is true also of Israel’s main non-state enemies outside Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. But due to the war, both of these militant movements are losing support.

Hezbollah, the well-armed Lebanese Shi’te movement which fought Israel to a standstill in a major conflict in the summer of 2006, is now involved in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Shi’ite regime in Damascus. The group has at least 5,000 fighters in the Syrian battle theater, and has been turning the tide against the rebel opposition. They helped the regime capture the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border recently.

But this comes at a cost. “There is no doubt that Hezbollah is being degraded,” said Shai Feldman, director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.

The organization, he told the Forward newspaper in New York, is not only losing men and weapons in the Syrian combat; it is also coming under increasing attacks from political rivals in Lebanon and in the broader Arab world. “For the short term,” Feldman said, “this means Israel is safer, because Hezbollah’s focus is in a completely different direction.”

In Gaza, to Israel’s southwest, Hamas, the Sunni organization close to the Muslim Brotherhood, has also suffered because of the Syrian civil war. The group’s constant rocket attacks into Israel led to all-out war in the winter of 2008–2009 and again in 2012.

Now, because of its backing of Sunni opposition groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hamas has lost millions of dollars in funding and weaponry it used to get from Shi’ite Iran, which supports the Syrian regime. A cash-strapped Hamas has lost some of its capabilities and is less able to launch attacks on Israel.

Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas deputy foreign minister, told The London newspaper the Telegraph in late May that relations with Iran were “bad” and said that, “for supporting the Syrian revolution, we lost very much.” He indicated that military aid from Iran had come to a full stop.

Meanwhile, in early June al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged Syrians to unite to bring down President Assad and thwart what he said were U.S. plans to set up a client state in Syria to safeguard Israel's security. Al-Qaeda is militantly Sunni.

Zawahri, an Egyptian who became Al-Qaida’s head after Osama bin Laden was killed, also criticized Iran for supporting Assad, saying the conflict in Syria had “revealed the ugly face of Iran.”

The internecine Arab warfare has taken diplomatic pressure off Israel to renew talks with the Palestinians as well. Even so, Israel must tread warily. The Middle East is, after all, a minefield, and no one knows whether the fighting in Syria may yet spread.