Syria-Israel saber rattling eases off

Still, IDF to rush ahead with gas mask distributions

By ICEJ News

05 Feb 2010

The flare up in rhetoric between Israel and Syria appeared to be waning on Friday as tempers cooled and members of the Israeli government made reassuring statement on their desire for peace with Damascus.

“I and the security establishment feel that an agreement with Syria is a strategic objective for Israel,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a Labor Party forum last night. He added that Israel is in a position of strength and can “allow ourselves to work with determination toward reaching agreements in the Middle East, without giving up or harming in any way Israel’s security interests.”

On Tuesday, Barak had inadvertently set off an escalation in rhetoric when he cautioned that unless negotiations with Syria are seriously pursued, Israel will wind up in an “all-out war” with Syria – comments that Damascus misinterpreted as a threat.

The next day, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem warned Israel that the next war would be waged “inside your cities” and President Bashar Assad quickly added that Israel was "leading the region towards war.”

Some analysts speculated that the flare up might be the result of Iran asking its Syrian ally to stir up trouble in order to divert attention from their renegade nuclear program, while another possibility is that the Syrians and Israelis are both trying to ratchet up tension in order to sell the idea of negotiations to their own publics.

In any event, the talk of war with Syria has added even more impetus to Israeli preparations for a possible conflict, as the IDF Home Front Command announced on Friday that they will begin distribution of refurbished gas mask kits to Israeli citizens at the end of February. The kits will be distributed starting in parts of the country deemed to be under the greatest threat. The Israeli postal authority will carry out the distribution.

Despite the rise in tension in Israel surrounding all the preparations for war, a recent survey conducted by researchers from the Haifa and Ben Gurion universities found that most Israelis are confident in the IDF and the government to protect them. There had been a steep decline in those numbers following the only partially successful Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, but they jumped back up following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last year and much of the credit is given to the reforms conducted under the leadership of IDF Chief-of-Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

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