Publications
Strategic Survey for Israel 2016-2017, eds. Anat Kurz and Shlomo Brom, Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, 2016

This article discusses the crisis in Syria, analyzes the complex array of factors behind the war in Syria and its future course. The writer concludes that a political solution to the crisis is a distant dream, probably because, inter alia, the war has become a theater of confrontation between the United States and Western and Arab countries on one side and the coalition supporting Bashar al-Assad’s rule, headed by Iran and Russia, on the other. In this situation, it is critical for Israel to try to maintain its freedom of action in southern Syria and Lebanon, continue its operational coordination with Russia in the arena and its coordination with Jordan regarding Syria, and improve its levers of influence vis-à-vis local communities in the Syrian Golan Heights. At the same time, Israel should prepare for the possibility that it will be faced with the presence of Iran and Hezbollah in the Golan Heights. If this happens, Israel’s policy of non-intervention in the war in Syria should be reconsidered.