A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Lauren Johnson]

from As'ad AbuKhalil: http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/angry...yria-again

There is no mystery anymore. Israel has been a major player in the Syrian conflict. The Syrian conflict has been an open arena for all the enemies of Syria dubbed for historical irony as "friends of Syria" to help themselves to the destruction of Syria the country and not the regime. In fact, all the enemies of Syria would have preferred a deal that would keep the regime intact in order to reassure Israel.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey were the visible players in Syria, but US and Israel were not far behind (or ahead). After all, the Western media are quite explicit that Qatar and Saudi Arabia would not act without the consent and orders from the White House. This is the second major bombing by Israel in Syria, but Israel has been most likely as it was in Iraq complicit in the assassinations of Syrian scientists and its opponents. There has never been a civil war or an internal conflict in the Arab world in which Israel has not played a major role. Some American media noted the presence of Mossad agents in Syria; Free Syrian Army gangs have been working with them.

The US and Israel have decided that the war criminal gangs of the FSA are the chosen militias that can receive US (and presumably Israeli) military aid. Those are very much like the warlords of Afghanistan: criminals who are willing to chant the right slogans and to issue the right press releases in return for large sums of cash and Western assistance.

Watching Saudi and Qatari media today was a return to the past: the spokespeople (let us call them spokesmen as they all are men in this pitiful "revolution" that was ostensibly led by secular and feminist women, according to the early pre-prepared narrative in the Western media and college campus presentations) of the Syrian exile opposition were actually gleeful that their country is being bombed by Israel. They used the same language that Bashir Gemayyel used to justify his relationship with Israel during the long years of the Lebanese civil war (and prior). They spoke about accepting help from anyone, "even Satan." We know this code language. And some spokesmen of the opposition started to play their assigned role in the Israeli psychological operation by suddenly announcing that "large sections" of the Syrian Army have started to defect basically as soon as the bombing had begun.

This was never a "revolution". I among other leftists in Lebanon signed a petition early on after the events in Deraa in which we denounced the regime and mocked and dismissed its narrative of armed groups roaming the country and shooting at people. I now figure that I was dead wrong: I do believe that armed groups were pre-prepared and armed to strike when orders (from Israel and GCC countries) arrive. They had a mission and it had nothing to do with the cause of liberation of Syria from a tyrannical regime.

The regime is still silent; probably resorting to its dreaded line about determining "the time and place of the battle with Israel." But the battle never comes and responses to Israeli attacks never come either. The Golan is still occupied and the regime (like the opposition) is only willing to use its firepower inside Syria (or inside Lebanon in previous years) but not against Israel. Similarly, the Syrian armed groups have been flirting with Israel for a while now and their game has been exposed today. Their token statement of "neutrality" is belied by the statements of opposition "activists" on various opposition Facebook pages.

The US government and media play their usual roles. Never question what Israel does anywhere in the world. Justifications are provided instantly, and it was not a coincidence that the New York Times had a front page story about poor little Israel and how it has to fend for itself to defend itself from the conflict and turmoil in Syria. Only a week ago, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, having received different propaganda marching orders from the Israeli government, reported that Israel was in fact calm and just enjoying the carnage in Syria.

The conflict in Syria has long been outside of the hands of the Syrian people. It is not that a local-internal conflict became regional and international over a two years period. No, it was regional-international from the start. The US and its clients in the Arab counter-revolution movement were ready to steer Arab uprisings in a direction that pleases US and Israel. The fall of Mubarak required the fall of the Assad regime although the US and Israel are discovering that they can continue to do business with the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is not to say that the Syrian people don't have more than a hundred reasons to overthrow the Syrian regime. They do, but this was not about the underlying causes of revolt in Syria. The Qatari, Saudi, Turkish, Israeli, and US beef with the Syrian regime was never about democracy. The Syrian regime had brutally repressed revolts and uprisings before and there were no criticisms heard and the Saudi government (and later the Qatari) was willing to bankroll the Assad dynasty provided that the two work together in Lebanon and in the region.

It is not that the there is no Syrian revolution (and there is not), but the outcome of the conflict in Syria is now certainly not going to be democratic. You can make that prediction on the basis of the sponsors of the "revolutionaries" and the ideology (and practices) of the active armed groups in Syria. But the Syrian armed groups are being fooled by US and Israel into thinking that the Syrian throne is now within their reach, while the two sides hope for a longer protracted conflict that would exhaust and fatigue the entire Syrian nation and would distract them from considering harming Israeli interests.

The Syrian regime has shown in the past that it was willing to do business under the table with Israel. The Syrian National Coalition and all the active armed groups in Syria have proven that they are willing to align with Israel before they reach power and to do business over the table. That can only bode ill for the future of Syria.