Syrian anti-Assad Syrian group sees Israeli Prime Minister as their best advocate
Following his meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May and as he prepares to meet President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that containing Iranian power remains his top strategic concern.
“They [the Iranians] are trying to test the boundaries with extraordinary aggression, gall and defiance,” said Netanyahu. “I think that the most important thing at the moment is that countries like the US, which will take the lead, Israel and the UK line up together against Iran’s aggression and set clear limits to it.”
No one was happier with the Prime Minister’s remarks than opposition Syrian politician Fahad Almasri.
“Without a doubt, Mr. Netanyahu can seize this golden opportunity to put his government in the history books as a hero of peace,” said Almasri, founder and General Coordinator of the National Salvation Front in Syria, an anti-Assad opposition party with links to insurgent groups routinely characterized as “moderate” by Western powers.
For Almasri and other Sunni opponents of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime, Netanyahu’s singular focus on Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hizbullah, means the Israeli prime minister has positioned himself as their most forceful advocate in London and Washington – especially as the Anglo-American world turns culturally and economically inward.
“Public opinion in Syria is waiting for more military operations from Israel,” Almasri told The Media Line. “Israel has tried to protect and defend itself from Hizbullah and other militias affiliated to Iran, it serves the security of Israel and the Syrian people.”
Throughout the American presidential campaign there was a sense in opposition circles that a Trump administration could tilt toward Moscow’s position on Syria. The Kremlin has been a staunch supporter of Assad, including a campaign of airstrikes against Syrian rebel groups. Some analysts say that Assad is still in power today because of Russian support.
“As the focus became ISIS not Assad, many in Syria came to believe Israel is behind the continuation of the status quo,” Ayman Abdul Nour, an opposition publisher told The Media Line, using a common acronym for Islamic State. “These people think that somehow Israel put a veto on the fall of Assad.”
After Trump’s election, Almasri and a handful of likeminded opposition figures made a frontal gambit towards Israel in an attempt to signal Jerusalem that they have serious potential Syrian partners.
Some including Kurdish activist Sirwan Kajjo and exiled politician Issam Zeitoun were sent to represent the opposition at a conference on Syria’s future held last month at Hebrew University’s Truman Institute.
Almasri himself appeared via a satellite TV hookup from Paris.
This week his National Salvation Front group issued a “Roadmap for peace between Syria and Israel “calling for termination of treaties signed between the Assad government and the Iranians and Teheran’s complete withdraw of forces.
Conversely the group declared that “the new Syria will not be hostile in any way toward the State of Israel.”
The overture may have already reaped dividends.
Hillel Frisch, a prominent analyst at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University- the Israeli think tank most closely aligned with Netanyahu – declared that it was time for Jerusalem to end what he called “groupthink” on Syria.
“The recent major changes in the balance of power in favor of Iran and its allies in Syria call for a more interventionist and publicly declared Israeli strategy in support of Syria’s rebels to balance against Iran and its allies,” wrote Frisch in a recent policy paper published on the center’s website.
“It is not in Israel’s interest to allow its major enemies to carve out the Syria they want,” wrote Frisch who added that “at the very least, a debate should take place over Israel’s present policies on Syria.”
Yossi Alpher, a former intelligence officer with both the IDF and the Mossad forcefully rebuts the thinking behind Frisch’s call for a Syria policy reassessment.
“We learned, or should have learned in 1982-83 [in Lebanon] and in various interventions with the Palestinians that any meddling by us in the affairs of our Arab neighbors is ultimately counterproductive,” Alpher told the Media Line. “It paints us as the villain in their internal conflicts.”
Alpher thinks that Netanyahu has yet to buy into the case for intervention in Syria beyond surgical strikes against Hizbullah-Iranian weapons transfers.
“There is no strong moderate rebel camp in Syria with a chance to make serious gains for us to support. Netanyahu’s non-intervention policy in Syria has been wise – something you can’t say about his approach to the Palestinian issue, which ultimately is disastrous,” said Alpher, author of the recently published book, “No End of Conflict: Rethinking Israel-Palestine.”
Al Almasri has been denounced by the state run SANA news agency for “appeasing the enemy” with his proposals to boot Palestinian militant organizations out of the country while offering naturalized Syrian citizenship to the descendants of the 1948 refugees.
“Blood, history and the future connect us with Syria and nobody has the right to capitulate to the occupation government and to collude with it at the expense of the Palestinian cause,” said Mahmoud al-Khalidi, the Palestinian Authority’ s ambassador to Syria.
In his telephone interview with the Media Line, Al Masry said he was subjected to a slew of threats after he published his Israel-Syria peace roadmap.
“Personally, I am ready for the risk if I have any role in achieving real peace between Syria and Israel and the end of Iranian domination over my country.”