Ariel Schalit/AP - An Israeli air force F-15 Eagle jet fighter plane takes off from Tel Nof air force base for a mission over Gaza Strip in central Israel, Monday, Nov. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
JERUSALEM — Israeli aircraft struck inside Syria on Wednesday for the first time since 2007, according to Western and Syrian officials, in a development that underlined the risk that the civil war in Syria could spill over into a wider conflict.
There were conflicting reports about the target and its location. A Western official and a former Lebanese security official said earlier Wednesday that Israel had attacked inside Syria along the border with Lebanon, and the former Lebanese official said an unmanned aircraft had hit a truck carrying weapons. But in a later statement, the Syrian army denied a strike along the border and said instead that Israeli jets had bombed a defense research center near Damascus.
Israel declined to comment, as did U.S. officials, who deferred to Israel, a key security partner. The response was similar to the silence that followed Israel’s bombing five years ago of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor, an attack that U.S. officials later confirmed but that the Israelis have not acknowledged to date.
The attack Wednesday highlighted deepening Israeli concerns that the disintegration of Syria could lead to the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamist militants there or to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in neighboring Lebanon, posing new threats to Israel’s military reach across its borders.
Hezbollah, which is closely aligned with both Syria and Iran, condemned the airstrike as “barbaric aggression” and expressed “full solidarity with Syria’s command, army and people,” the Associated Press reported. Russia, Syria’s chief patron, said the strike would constitute “unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the U.N. Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives to justify it.”
The Syrian government said in a statement that Israeli aircraft had bombed “a scientific research center responsible for raising the levels of resistance and self-
defense” in Jamraya, northwest of Damascus, the capital.
The statement said the Israeli planes had flown below radar range and destroyed the building, killing two employees and wounding five. The statement denied that a convoy had been hit near the border with Lebanon, calling the reports “baseless.”
But according to earlier accounts by the Western official and a U.S. official, Israeli aircraft struck near the Syria-Lebanon border. The officials said there were no indications that chemical weapons were targeted.
Concerns about Hezbollah
The Associated Press, citing unnamed regional security officials, said that Israel had been planning to target a Syrian shipment of antiaircraft missiles bound for Hezbollah and that the shipment included sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 missiles.
Although Israeli and U.S. security officials have said that Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles were secure for now, there is profound concern in Israel about a parallel transfer of advanced conventional weapons to Hezbollah.
Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s national security council, said in an interview that any transfer to Hezbollah of weapons considered to be game-changers, such as the Russian antiaircraft missiles or long-range Scud missiles, is viewed as gravely as the chemical threat.
The antiaircraft weapons could curtail Israel’s air dominance in Lebanon, and the long-range missiles could give Hezbollah — which fought a war with Israel in 2006 — enhanced strike range across Israel’s entire territory.
“These are no less troubling than chemical weapons,” Eiland said. “They are more widespread and not as tightly controlled by the regime, so they can fall into the hands of Hezbollah.”
Earlier Wednesday, Lebanon’s military said 12 Israeli warplanes had violated Lebanese airspace in less than 24 hours, flying low in several sorties over villages in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army said it would not comment on the reports, which followed several days of statements and high-level consultations on Syria among senior Israeli officials.
On Sunday, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Army Radio that the movement of chemical weapons to Islamist rebels in Syria or to Hezbollah would be “a crossing of all red lines that would require a different approach, including even preventive operations.” He confirmed media reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convened a meeting of top security chiefs last week to discuss developments in Syria and its chemical arsenal.
In public comments Sunday at the start of the weekly cabinet session, Netanyahu said Israel had to keep an eye on “lethal weaponry in Syria, which is breaking apart.” He added that there is “an accumulation of threats” for which Israel has to prepare.
Two Iron Dome missile defense batteries were positioned Sunday in northern Israel, in what the army called part of a routine rotation nationwide.
Many regional analysts say Hezbollah has not only restocked its weapons arsenal since the 2006 war but has also greatly expanded the supply and sophistication of its rockets. In a speech in May 2012, Hasan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, said Hezbollah could now launch rockets anywhere in Israel, and he later remarked that Syria had supplied the group’s most potent weapons.
Amnon Sofrin, a former director of intelligence for Israel’s foreign spy agency, the Mossad, told reporters in Jerusalem on Wednesday that with Syria in turmoil, Nasrallah was eager “to move to Lebanon everything he can under his custody.” Sofrin said Israel was watching carefully for convoys of weapons moving to Lebanon from Syria, where Hezbollah is thought to have stored some of its arms.
Mystery about motives
The Syrian assertion that Israel had bombed a research center deepened the mystery surrounding the possible motives for the attack. The official statement suggested that the target might have been a facility near Damascus operated by the Scientific Studies and Research Center, an arm of Syria’s armed forces that Western experts have linked to the country’s missiles and chemical weapons programs.
In 2005, the George W. Bush administration sanctioned the SSRC in an executive order, and two years later, the White House froze the assets of several of the center’s subsidiaries, on the grounds that SSRC scientists were seeking to develop “non-conventional weapons and the missiles to deliver them.”
Yet, military experts cautioned that there was no independent evidence that the facility had been bombed by a foreign air force. Syria may simply be trying to blame Israel for the loss of a facility that had fallen to rebels or been destroyed by other means, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“Would the Israelis have hit a facility that may have some chemical weapons in it? It’s doubtful,” said Cordesman, who co-authored a 2008 study of Syria’s weapons program. “If they did, Syria could respond by dispersing its arsenal further, which would increase the risk to Israel.”
On Wednesday morning, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released a list of security incidents that included reports of shelling and a “huge fire” in the Jamraya area.
Rami Abdulrahman, who is the director of the monitoring group and who uses a pseudonym, said in an interview that reports about the incident were conflicting, with some local sources saying that it involved mortar shells and others alleging that Syrian airplanes struck the building.
Greenberg reported from Jerusalem. Joby Warrick, Julie Tate, Karen DeYoung and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/reports-israeli-aircraft-fired-missile-along-lebanon-syria-border/2013/01/30/60fab2be-6adf-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_print.html
Israel Strikes Syria Military Target
BEIRUT — Israel launched a rare airstrike inside Syria, U.S. officials said Wednesday, targeting a convoy believed to contain anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The attack adds a potentially flammable new element to tensions already heightened by Syria's civil war.
It was the latest salvo in Israel's long-running effort to disrupt the Shiite militia's quest to build an arsenal capable of defending against Israel's air force and spreading destruction inside the Jewish state.
Regional security officials said the strike, which occurred overnight Tuesday, targeted a site near the Lebanese border, while a Syrian army statement said it destroyed a military research center northwest of the capital, Damascus. They appeared to be referring to the same incident.
U.S. officials said the target was a truck convoy that Israel believed was carrying sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the operation.
Regional officials said the shipment included sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which if acquired by Hezbollah would be "game-changing," enabling the militants to shoot down Israeli jets, helicopters and surveillance drones. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
In a statement, the Syrian military denied the existence of any such shipment and said a scientific research facility outside Damascus was hit by the Israeli warplanes.
The Israeli military declined to comment. However, many in Israel worry that as Syrian President Bashar Assad loses power, he could strike back by transferring chemical or advanced weapons to Hezbollah, which is neighboring Lebanon's most powerful military force and is committed to Israel's destruction.
The airstrike follows decades of enmity between Israel and allies Syria and Hezbollah, which consider the Jewish state their mortal enemy. The situation has been further complicated by the civil war raging in Syria between the Assad regime and rebel brigades seeking his ouster.
The war has sapped Assad's power and threatens to deprive Hezbollah of a key supporter, in addition to its land corridor to Iran. The two countries provide Hezbollah with the bulk of its funding and arms.
A Syrian military statement read aloud on state TV Wednesday said low-flying Israeli jets crossed into Syria over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and bombed a military research center in the area of Jamraya, northwest of Damascus.
The strike destroyed the center and damaged a nearby building, killing two workers and wounding five others, the statement said.
The military denied the existence of any convoy bound for Lebanon, saying the center was responsible for "raising the level of resistance and self-defense" of Syria's military.
"This proves that Israel is the instigator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts targeting Syria and its people," the statement said.
Israel and Hezbollah fought an inconclusive 34-day war in 2006 that left 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis dead.
While the border has been largely quiet since, the struggle has taken other forms. Hezbollah has accused Israel of assassinating a top commander, and Israel blamed Hezbollah and Iran for a July 2012 attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. In October, Hezbollah launched an Iranian-made reconnaissance drone over Israel, using the incident to brag about its expanding capabilities.
Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah's arsenal has markedly improved since 2006, now boasting tens of thousands of rockets and missiles and the ability to strike almost anywhere inside Israel.
Israel suspects that Damascus obtained a battery of SA-17s from Russia after an alleged Israeli airstrike in 2007 that destroyed an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor.
Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of the dangers of Syria's "deadly weapons," saying the country is "increasingly coming apart."
The same day, Israel moved a battery of its new "Iron Dome" rocket defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was battered by Hezbollah rocket fire in the 2006 war. The Israeli army called that move "routine."
Syria, however, cast the airstrike in a different light, linked to the country's civil war, which it blames on terrorists carrying out an international conspiracy.
Despite its icy relations with Assad, Israel has remained on the sidelines of efforts to topple him, while keeping up defenses against possible attacks.
Israeli defense officials have carefully monitored Syria's chemical weapons, fearing Assad could deploy them or lose control of them to extremist fighters among the rebels.
President Barack Obama has called the use of chemical weapons a "red line" that if crossed could prompt direct U.S. intervention, though U.S. officials have said Syria's stockpiles still appear to be under government control.
The strike was Israel's first inside Syria since September 2007, when warplanes destroyed a site that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed likely to be a nuclear reactor. Syria denied the claim, saying the building was a non-nuclear military site.
Syria allowed international inspectors to visit the bombed site in 2008, but it has refused to allow nuclear inspectors new access. This has heightened suspicions that Syria has something to hide, along with its decision to level the destroyed structure and build on its site.
In 2006, Israeli warplanes flew over Assad's palace in a show of force after Syrian-backed militants captured an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip.
And in 2003, Israeli warplanes attacked a suspected militant training camp just north of the Syrian capital, in response to an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in the city of Haifa that killed 21 Israelis.
Syria vowed to retaliate for both attacks but never did.
In Lebanon, which borders both Israel and Syria, the military and the U.N. agency tasked with monitoring the border with Israel said Israeli warplanes have sharply increased their activity in the past week.
Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace are not uncommon, and it was unclear if the recent activity was related to the strike in Syria.
Syria's primary conflict with Israel is over the Golan Heights, which Israeli occupied in the 1967 war. Syria demands the area back as part of any peace deal. Despite the hostility, Syria has kept the border quiet since the 1973 Mideast war and has never retaliated for Israeli attacks.
In May 2011, only two months after the uprising against Assad started, hundreds of Palestinians overran the tightly controlled Syria-Israeli frontier in a move widely thought to have been facilitated by the Assad regime to divert the world's gaze from his growing troubles at home.
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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Bradley Klapper in Washington, and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.
Syria, Iran Threaten Israel With Retaliation For Strike
BEIRUT — Syria threatened Thursday to retaliate for an Israeli airstrike and its ally Iran said there will be repercussions for the Jewish state over the attack.
Syria sent a letter to the U.N. Secretary-General stressing the country's "right to defend itself, its territory and sovereignty" and holding Israel and its supporters accountable.
"Israel and those who protect it at the Security Council are fully responsible for the repercussions of this aggression," the letter from Syria's Foreign Ministry said.
U.S. officials said Israel launched a rare airstrike inside Syria on Wednesday. The target was a convoy believed to be carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group allied with Syria and Iran.
In Israel, a lawmaker close to hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stopped short of confirming involvement in the strike. But he hinted that Israel could carry out similar missions in the future.
The attack has inflamed regional tensions already running high over Syria's 22-month-old civil war.
Israeli leaders in the days leading up to the airstrike had been publicly expressing concern that Syrian President Bashar Assad may be losing his grip on the country and its arsenal of conventional and nonconventional weapons.
Regional security officials said Wednesday that the targeted shipment included sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which if acquired by Hezbollah would enhance its military capabilities by enabling the militants to shoot down Israeli jets, helicopters and surveillance drones.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
The Syrian military denied there was any weapons convoy and said low-flying Israeli jets had crossed into their country over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to bomb a scientific research center near Damascus.
It said the target was in the area of Jamraya, northwest of Damascus and about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the Lebanese border.
Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, who in December became one of the most senior Syrian army officers to defect, told The Associated Press by telephone from Turkey that the site they said was targeted is a "major and well-known" center to develop weapons known as the Scientific Research Center.
Al-Shallal, who until his defection was commander of the military police, said no chemical or nonconventional weapons are at the site. He added that foreign experts, including Russians and Iranians, are usually present at such centers.
Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul-Karim Ali threatened retribution for the Israeli airstrike, saying Damascus "has the option and the capacity to surprise in retaliation."
He told Hezbollah's al-Ahd news website that it was up to the relevant authorities to prepare the retaliation and choose the time and place.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry summoned Major-General Iqbal Singh Singha, the head of mission and force commander for United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) on the Golan Heights, to complain about the Israeli violation.
The force was established in 1974 following the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces in the area and has remained there since to maintain the cease-fire. Israel captured the Golan, a strategic plateau, from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, deputy U.N. spokesman Eduardo del Buey said: "UNDOF did not observe any planes flying over the area of separation, and therefore was not able to confirm the incident." UNDOF also reported bad weather conditions, he said.
Hezbollah condemned the attack as "barbaric aggression" and said it "expresses full solidarity with Syria's command, army and people."
The group did not mention any weapons convoy in the statement but said the strike aimed to prevent Arab and Muslim forces from developing their military capabilities.
In Iran, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying the raid will have significant implications for Israel.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi condemned the airstrike on state television, calling it a clear violation of Syrian sovereignty. Iran is Syria's strongest ally in the Middle East, and has provided Assad's government with military and political backing for years.
Russia, Syria's most important international ally, said this appeared to be an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation. Moscow said it was taking urgent measures to clarify the situation in all its details.
"If this information is confirmed, we have a case of unprovoked attacks on targets in the territory of a sovereign state, which grossly violates the U.N. Charter and is unacceptable," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "Whatever the motives, this is not justified."
Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, who is close to Prime Minister Netanyahu, said pinpoint strikes are not enough to counter the threat of Hezbollah obtaining sophisticated weaponry from Syria.
"Israel's preference would be if a Western entity would control these weapons systems," Hanegbi said. "But because it appears the world is not prepared to do what was done in Libya or other places, then Israel finds itself like it has many times in the past facing a dilemma that only it knows how to respond to," he added.
He was referring to NATO's 2011 military intervention in Libya that helped oust dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
"Even if there are reports about pinpoint operations, these are not significant solutions to the threat itself because we are talking about very substantial capabilities that could reach Hezbollah," he said.
Syria's civil war has sapped Assad's power and threatens to deprive Hezbollah of a key supporter, in addition to its land corridor to Iran. The two countries provide Hezbollah with the bulk of its funding and arms.
Earlier this week, Netanyahu warned of the dangers of Syria's "deadly weapons," saying the country is "increasingly coming apart."
The same day, Israel moved a battery of its new "Iron Dome" rocket defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was battered by Hezbollah rocket fire in the 2006 war. The Israeli army called that move "routine."
The Israeli army won't say whether Iron Dome was sent north in connection to this operation. It does note that it has deployed the system in the north before.
A U.N. diplomat confirmed that the organization received a letter from the Syrian ambassador but said it did not contain a request for a Security Council meeting.
A U.N. statement said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed grave concern over reports of Israeli airstrikes on Syria but said the U.N. does not have details of the reported incident and cannot independently verify what happened.
"The Secretary-General calls on all concerned to prevent tensions or their escalation in the region, and to strictly abide by international law, in particular in respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty of all countries in the region," the statement said.
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Associated Press writer Ian Deitch in Jerusalem and Peter James Spielmann at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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