Defense, Too, Is Out of Bounds

By MK Arieh Eldad

No one disagrees: Syria has powerful chemical weapons and missiles capable of reaching every part of Israel. Despite this fact, Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided this week that the defense bureaucracy would not distribute gas masks and similar protective gear to Israeli citizens. The Israeli army, the National Security Council, and the Knesset Security and Defense Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Preparedness–whose members are provided with the background information to all decisions–all recommended that the masks and equipment be distributed. But, as reported by the media, Barak “does not want to upset the Syrians.” This is akin to refusing to put bars on one’s windows in a crime ridden neighborhood “so as not to upset the thieves.”

Unhappy Syrians are of course not what is worrying Barak. Rather he believes that distributing the equipment will signal Syria that Israel is preparing its citizens for a war that it is planning, a signal which of itself may cause Syria to launch a pre-emptive war.

Is there a basis for these calculations by Barak? Of all the wars that Israel has fought, have the Arabs opened even one because they were convinced Israel was about to attack them? Before the Six Day War, Russia provided false intelligence to Egypt and Syria that convinced them that Israel intended to attack. But even then, it was Israel who started the war. Months before the Yom Kippur War, Egypt engaged in extensive exercises anticipating the precise maneuvers they would use during the war. Egypt’s intention was to turn the exercise into an actual operation if Israel did not respond. Israel drafted its reserves and the exercise did not turn into a war. On Yom Kippur, however, Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir refused to draft the reserves even though it was clear Egypt intended to start a war, and we all know the results.

Deterrence is the backbone of Israel’s military strategy. Were Israel to be unsure of whether to publicly announce that it was arming itself with offensive weapons capable of destroying the Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, the reasons not to publicize such information would be understandable; even though it would bolster our deterrence, it might be interpreted as an intentional provocation. But when Barak refuses to supply the country’s citizens with protective gear, a measure that cannot kill a single Syrian, he is taking a risk that the enemy will read his stripping us of protective gear not as a declaration of peace but rather as a temptation to attack. An enemy may be less inclined to attack with chemical and biological weapons if it knows Israel is protected, for the punishment it would receive for such an attack would be extreme. It would risk using such weaponry only if it knows that it can cause us serious damage. What decision would Barak take if he knew that Hizbollah or Hamas had such weaponry? Would he, under those circumstances, too, refuse to protect our citizens? Does he believe the Syrians love us more than those they sponsor, fund, equip, train, manage, and allow to operate terror headquarters in Damascus?

In the recent Lebanese War, Israel refrained from attacking Syria despite Syria’s responsibility for Hizbollah’s Katyusha rocketry. The United States clearly signaled us and the European countries hinted that they would not condemn Israel for punishing Syria. But Olmert and his government preferred to lose the war against Hizbollah and not to strike at the key target: Syria. Syria’s Assad learned from the war in Lebanon. Not only is Israel unable to fight a guerilla organization, and not able to commit to an all out war for fear of casualties, but it is afraid to strike at Syria without direct provocation. All these lessons learned by Assad may encourage him to supply the terrorist organizations with chemical or biological weapons with which they could deal Israel an awful blow–without any risk to Assad at all.

In the past, the defense establishment has proposed an alternative to protective gear being in the hands of the citizens at all times: collecting and upgrading the gear and distributing it at a time of need. This alternative is workable only if we know several weeks in advance about a Syrian intention to attack. But Israel’s citizens are aware that its various intelligence sources disagree widely about the enemy’s intentions, and we really do not know what the Syrians’ plans are. Since we do not have precise information but only estimates and guesses, he who is taking a great risk—and not because of a lack of means but only “to avoid upsetting the Syrians”—is playing with the lives of tens of thousands of people.