How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace
American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s
far-right Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead
and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine,
and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal.
Dec 12, 2024
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-israel-syria
In the famous lines of Tacitus, Roman historian, “To
ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where
they make a desert, they call it peace.”
In our age, it is Israel and the U.S. that make a desert and call it
peace.
The story is simple. In stark violation of international law, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his
ministers claim the right to rule over seven million Palestinian Arabs. When
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands leads to militant resistance, Israel
labels the resistance “terrorism” and calls on the U.S. to overthrow the Middle
East governments that back the “terrorists.” The U.S., under the sway of the
Israel Lobby, goes to war on Israel’s behalf.
The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the
Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s
arrival to office as Prime Minister. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in
2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of
the Syrian Government in Operation
Timber Sycamore. That
effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than
300,000 deaths in
the Syrian war since 2011.
Syria’s fall came swiftly because of more than a
decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the U.S. seizure of
Syria’s oil, Russia’s priorities regarding the conflict in Ukraine, and most
immediately, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, which was the key military backstop
to the Syrian Government. No doubt Assad often misplayed his own hand and faced
severe internal discontent, but his regime was targeted for collapse for
decades by the U.S. and Israel.
Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria,
including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil
fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.
Before the U.S.-Israel campaign to overthrow Assad
began in earnest in 2011, Syria was a functioning, growing middle-income
country. In January 2009, the IMF
Executive Board had
this to say:
Executive Directors welcomed Syria’s strong
macroeconomic performance in recent years, as manifested in the rapid non-oil
GDP growth, comfortable level of foreign reserves, and low and declining
government debt. This performance reflected both robust regional demand and the
authorities’ reform efforts to shift toward a more market- based economy.
Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria,
including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil
fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.
In the immediate two days following the collapse of
the government, Israel conducted
about 480 strikes across
Syria, and completely destroyed the
Syrian fleet in
Latakia. Pursuing his expansionist agenda, Prime Minister Netanyahu illegally
claimed control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and
declared that the Golan Heights will be a part of the State of Israel “for eternity.”
Netanyahu’s ambition to transform the region through
war, which dates back almost three decades, is playing out in front of our
eyes. In a press conference on December 9th, the Israeli prime minister
boasted of an “absolute victory,” justifying the on-going genocide in Gaza and
escalating violence throughout the region:
I ask you, just think, if we had acceded to those who
told us time and again: '"The war must be stopped"– we would not have
entered Rafah, we would not have seized the Philadelphia Corridor, we would not
have eliminated Sinwar, we would not have surprised our enemies in Lebanon and
the entire world in a daring operation-stratagem, we would not have eliminated
Nasrallah, we would not have destroyed Hezbollah's underground network, and we
would not have exposed Iran's weakness. The operations that we have carried out
since the beginning of the war are dismantling the axis brick by brick.
The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the
Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is
clear. Israel’s war on Syria began with U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives in
1996, who fashioned a “Clean Break” strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he
came to office. The core of the “clean break” strategy called for the Israel
(and the US) to reject “land for peace,” the idea that Israel would withdraw
from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace. Instead, Israel would
retain the occupied Palestinian lands, rule over the Palestinian people in an
Apartheid state, step-by-step ethnically cleanse the state, and enforce
so-called “peace for peace” by overthrowing neighboring governments that resisted
Israel’s land claims.
The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the
Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is
clear.
The Clean Break strategy asserts, “Our claim to the land—to which we have
clung for hope for 2000 years—is legitimate and noble,” and goes on to state,
“Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with
which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic
initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran,
as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…”
In his 1996 book Fighting
Terrorism,
Netanyahu set out the new strategy. Israel would not fight the terrorists; it
would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would
get the US to do Israel’s fighting for it. As he elaborated in 2001:
The first and most crucial thing to understand is
this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign
states.… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of
international terrorism will collapse into dust.
Netanyahu’s strategy was integrated into U.S. foreign
policy. Taking out Syria was always a key part of the plan. This was confirmed
to General Wesley Clark after 9/11. He was told, during a visit at the
Pentagon, that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven
countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to
move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” Iraq would be first,
then Syria, and the rest. (Netanyahu’s campaign for the Iraq War is spelled out
in detail in Dennis Fritz’s new book, Deadly
Betrayal. The role of the
Israel Lobby is spelled out in Ilan Pappé’s new book, Lobbying for
Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic). The insurgency that hit U.S. troops in Iraq set
back the five-year timeline, but did not change the basic strategy.
The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq
(invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO
bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010’s), Sudan (supporting rebels
to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia’s invasion in
2006). A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still
pending.
Strange as it might seem, the CIA has repeatedly
backed Islamist Jihadists to fight these wars, and jihadists have just toppled
the Syrian regime. The CIA, after all, helped to create al-Qaeda in the first
place by training, arming, and financing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from the
late 1970s onward. Yes, Osama bin Laden later turned on the U.S., but his
movement was a U.S. creation all the same. Ironically, as Seymour Hersh confirms, it was Assad’s intelligence that “tipped off the
U.S. to an impending Al Qaeda bombing attack on the headquarters of the U.S.
Navy’s Fifth Fleet.”
Operation Timber Sycamore was a billion-dollar CIA
covert program launched by Obama to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. The CIA funded,
trained, and provided intelligence to radical and extreme Islamist groups. The
CIA effort also involved a “rat line” to run weapons from Libya (attacked by
NATO in 2011) to the jihadists in Syria. In 2014, Seymour Hersh described the
operation in his piece “The Red Line
and the Rat Line”:
“A highly classified annex to the report, not made
public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama
and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the
agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was
responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”
Soon after the launch of Timber Sycamore, in March
2013, at a joint
conference by
President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, Obama said:
“With respect to Syria, the United States continues to work with allies and
friends and the Syrian opposition to hasten the end of Assad’s rule.”
To the U.S.-Israeli Zionist mentality, a call for
negotiation by an adversary is taken as a sign of weakness of the adversary.
Those who call for negotiations on the other side typically end up
dead—murdered by Israel or U.S. assets. We’ve seen this play out recently in
Lebanon. The Lebanese Foreign Minister confirmed that Hassan Nasrallah, Former
Secretary-General of Hezbollah had agreed to a
ceasefire with Israel
days before his assassination. Hezbollah’s willingness to
accept a peace agreement according
to the Arab-Islamic world’s wishes of a two-state solution is long-standing.
Similarly, instead of negotiating to end the war in Gaza, Israel assassinated
Hamas’ political chief,
Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.
Similarly in Syria, instead of allowing for a
political solution to emerge, the U.S. opposed the peace process multiple
times. In 2012, the UN had negotiated a peace agreement in Syria that was blocked by the Americans, who
demanded that Assad must go on the first day of the peace agreement. The U.S.
wanted regime change, not peace. In September 2024, Netanyahu addressed the
General Assembly with
a map of the Middle East divided between “Blessing” and “Curse,” with Lebanon,
Syria, Iraq, and Iran as part of Netanyahu’s curse. The real curse is Israel’s
path of mayhem and war, which has now engulfed Lebanon and Syria, with
Netayahu’s fervent hope to draw the U.S. into war with Iran as well.
The U.S. and Israel are high-fiving that they have
successfully wrecked yet another adversary of Israel and defender of the
Palestinian cause, with Netanyahu claiming “credit for
starting the historic process.” Most likely Syria will now succumb to continued
war among the many armed protagonists, as has happened in the previous
U.S.-Israeli regime-change operations.
In short, American interference, at the behest of
Netanyahu’s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead
and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal,
being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality.
All this is in the service of a profoundly unjust
cause: to deny Palestinians their political rights in the service of Zionist
extremism based on the 7th century BCE Book of Joshua. Remarkably, according to that text—one relied on by
Israel’s own religious zealots—the Israelites were not even the original
inhabitants of the land. Rather, according the text, God instructs Joshua and
his warriors to commit multiple genocides to conquer the land.
Against this backdrop, the Arab-Islamic nations and
indeed almost all of the world have repeatedly united in the call for a two-state
solution and peace between
Israel and Palestine.
Instead of the two-state solution, Israel and the U.S.
have made a desert and called it peace.
