Israel’s Gathering Storm

Caroline Glick’s excellent Jerusalem Post column “Fighting the next war” is the latest in her series on the threats confronting Israel. Glick writes:

Syria has been openly preparing for war since the last summer. And in the space of the past week alone, the Syrians twice announced their intention to attack Israel. On Monday, Syria’s Propaganda Minister Moshen Bilal threatened that if Israel doesn’t fully implement the Arab plan which calls for its retreat to the 1949 armistice lines and acceptance of millions of Arab immigrants, Syria will go to war. On Wednesday, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad said, “We always prepare ourselves. Israel is a fierce enemy. We have seen nothing from it but harm.”
A constructive Israeli policy for contending with Syria must be based on a clear understanding of both Syria’s interests and our own.
First there are Syria’s war preparations. Many note optimistically that Syria has not moved its tanks to the border. But why would it?
Syria has no intention of fighting a conventional war against Israel. The war that Syria is planning will bear greater similarity to the insurgency in Iraq and Hizbullah’s war last summer than to Syria’s previous wars with Israel.
In the midst of last summer’s war, Assad announced the formation of a new terror force tasked with infiltrating and attacking targets on the Golan Heights. The Syrian order of battle also includes a highly trained commando division; a massive artillery force capable of wreaking destruction on the Golan Heights and the Galilee; Scud ballistic missiles with ranges covering all of Israel; and chemical warheads that can be fitted on the Scuds.
This week CBN broadcast satellite footage of three hardened Syrian missile facilities outside of Homs and Hama. Syria aims to bleed Israel in order to force subsequent Israeli political concessions.

It’s a long column, all of which is worth reading.
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