Israel says wants to avoid escalation with Syria
Israel does not want to provoke a military
"escalation" with Syria but will not allow it to transfer strategic
arms to groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah, a cabinet minister said on Thursday.
"There is no need to provoke an escalation, there is no
need to heat up the border with Syria, that was not our objective and it will
never be," Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom told public radio.
Asked about Moscow's plans to supply S-300 anti-aircraft
missiles to Syria, Shalom said they would only become a problem if they fell
into the wrong hands.
"Syria has had strategic weapons for years, but the
problem arises when these arms fall into other hands and could be used against
us. In that case, we would have to act," he said.
Moscow has defended its arms shipments to Damascus,
describing them as a "stabilising factor" which could act as a
deterrent against foreign intervention.
Shalom's remarks were made a day after Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his cabinet to stay silent on the issue of Russian
arms shipments to Syria in a bid to reduce tensions with Damascus and Moscow.
Earlier this week, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon warned that
Israel would "known what do to" if Russia went ahead with the
delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft system.
His words appeared to be a veiled allusion to military
action along the lines of several strikes carried out on Syrian soil earlier
which targeted weapons from Iran destined for Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, Israel's National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror
recently met European Union ambassadors to explain clearly what Israel's red
lines were in respect to the S-300 system, Haaretz newspaper said on Thursday.
Amidror said Israel would not stop the delivery of the
system but would act "to prevent the S-300 from becoming operational"
on Syrian soil, according to the report.
"We are not interested in intervening or influencing
the situation inside Syria," he told them. We will only act when we need
to protect our security and thus we will prevent in the future the transfer of
advanced weapons to Hezbollah."
After the end of an annual civil defence drill on Thursday,
Netanyahu reiterated that Israel was surrounded by "tens of thousands of
missiles and rockets that could hit our home front."
Netanyahu pointed to the eight-day confrontation between
Israel and Hamas militants in November, during which rockets from Gaza hit near
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the first time, as "a small example of the
substantial changes in modes of attack."
"We must prepare defensively and offensively for the
new era of warfare," Netanyahu stressed. "The Israeli home front is
more accessible to the enemy than it has been."
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