In the summer of 2006, Hassan Nasrallah predicted that the Second Lebanon War would become a historic landmark and the countdown to the end of the State of Israel. With the same breath, Nasrallah sought to make the war into a milestone on Hezbollah’s road to hegemony in Lebanon. In practice, he failed. The Second Lebanon War did not break apart the camp of Hezbollah opponents in Lebanon, and it also turned the spotlight on the organization’s Shiite identity, its connections to Iran, its dependence on Tehran, and its obeisance to...
Five years of civil war and bloodshed have led to the collapse of the Syrian state and the shattering of its social mosaic. The Islamic State (ISIS) burst forth from the ruins – first of Iraq, then of Syria – to assume power and fill the vacuum left behind by crumbling states. In eastern Syria, which it occupied in the summer of 2014, the Islamic State serves as an effective alternative to the Syrian state institutions that have since disappeared. The entity aims to seize western areas of the country if and when the Syrian regime...
In March 2011, the “Spring of Arab Nations” that in previous months had visited other states throughout the Middle East arrived in Syria. The demonstrations that began in the city of Daraa in the south and in several northern coastal cities soon spread to all parts of Syria, eventually reaching the large cities of Damascus and Aleppo. The purpose of this article is to present a picture of the Syrian uprising from its first year, as well as an examination of the risks and opportunities it presents for Israel.
Israel’s military engagement with Hizbollah in the summer of 2006 has been called by many different names and monikers, including, of course, the Second Lebanon War, which was adopted by Israel as the official name of the war. Some commentators on Arab television stations called it the sixth Arab-Israeli round. In truth, however, most of the Arab world, at least its leaders and important segments of its ruling elites, supported Israel, and more precisely, stood aside with the expectation, which ultimately was not met, that...
For the last three decades, since the Syrian regime suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood uprising, the Baath regime of the Asad Alawi dynasty has been considered the most stable regime in the Middle East, maintaining a firm grip on the country and ruling it with an iron fist. And still, the wave of protest engulfing the Middle East and causing the collapse of the Arab regimes in Tunisia and Egypt has spread, not surprisingly, to Syria. After all, Syria’s social and economic reality is essentially no different from elsewhere in the...
At the height of the Lebanese parliamentary elections campaign, Hassan Nasrallah addressed a conference in the Beqaa Valley. In an impassioned speech, he sought to enlist support for Hizbollah’s candidates by referring to the Israeli enemy.
Immediately with the announcement of the ceasefire and the end of the fighting between Israel and the Hizbollah organization, both sides – as well as those who had observed from the sidelines – hurried to claim victory. Hizbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah declared that Hizbollah’s victory in the war was an historic event, and possibly an historic turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Syrian president Bashar Asad, who had not involved his country directly in the war yet did not disguise his support of Hizbollah or...
Early in the morning of June 27, Israel Air Force planes broke the sound barrier as they flew over the palace of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad in the Asad family’s hometown of Qardaha. That action was apparently driven by a lesson learned from a similar overflight four years before, in the fall of 2002, which was intended to warn Asad against escalation of the situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border but failed to impress him because he was completely unaware of the overflight at the time and only learned about it from...
On October 21, German investigator Detlev Mehlis submitted to the UN Security Council his interim report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The report, which accuses the Syrian authorities of being behind the murder and of subsequently trying to sabotage the investigation, has caused the ground to tremble in Damascus.
The exchange of fire across Israel’s northern border in mid-May has once again focused attention on Hizbullah and raised questions about the movement’s future in the wake of Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Some analysts interpret the clash as evidence of Hizbullah’s intention to escalate tensions and provoke a confrontation; others believe that the movement prefers a period of quiet, if only for tactical reasons, and that what it really wants now is to divert the heavy domestic and international pressure to...
At the last meeting between Rafiq al-Hariri and Syrian President Bashar al-Asad in August 2004, Asad asked Hariri to support the Syrian demand to extend the term of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud for another three years. Later on, Hariri related that Asad had even threatened that if he and his friends did not support this demand, Damascus would break their wrists and that he had accompanied the threat with a movement of his hand that left no doubt as to his seriousness.
