On March 14, 2016, Vladimir Putin announced the withdrawal of the majority of Russian military units from Syria, after, he claimed, the Russian force had achieved the goals set for it when it entered Syria five and a half months earlier. Yet whatever the reasons for Russia’s surprising move, it is apparent that Russia has announced a limitation on its participation in the fighting in Syria, not the conclusion of its military involvement. For its part, Israel has thus far refrained from choosing a side and intervening directly in the...
On February 27, 2016, a ceasefire went into effect in Syria between the forces of the Assad regime and the opposition. The understandings underpinning the ceasefire rely on the agreement between Russia and the United States, which are determined to promote a broader settlement in Syria. To maintain the ceasefire, they will need to restrain the other actors involved in the crisis. It is important for the United States to focus on fighting the Islamic State, and the key question is whether or not it will be able to join forces with...
On August 21, 2013 the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own civilians, killing over 1,000 in a single attack. Following this horrific incident, some Western states, most notably the United States, contemplated attacking Syria without United Nations Security Council (UNSC) authorization, raising a heated debate among legal experts over the legal basis for such an attack under international law.
On December 18, 2015, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2254, endorsing a roadmap for a political solution to the Syrian civil war. A number of foreign policy commentators initially welcomed the development as an important signal that the international community was finally united and committed to putting an end to the bloody and protracted internal conflict that has both engulfed Syria and destabilized the Levant. However, many central hurdles remain and effectively constrain moving forward with the...
The Yom Kippur War on the Syrian front ended on May 31, 1974 with UN Security Council Resolution 350 and the disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria. The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was established. Over the past five years, UNDOF’s operational environment has undergone a radical change, and over the past two years, the force itself has weathered a significant crisis. This essay presents the principal changes of the past five years and proposes recommendations for UNDOF, from the perspective of...
After months of an air-land military effort by the Russian-Iranian coalition in Syria, the integrated attack has been halted. The main goal of Iran’s intervention in the fighting in Syria is a strengthened Shiite Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah axis, built on the Alawite regime with its pro-Iranian orientation. For its part, Russia has other interests, and its preferred goal is a settlement that will give it a foothold and facilitate its influence in the Middle East, while putting an end to Western dominance in the region. Yet regardless...
Since late September 2015, Russia has launched airstrikes in Syria in order to assist the forces defending the Assad regime against the rebels and the Islamic State. Russia’s intervention includes the deployment of aerial forces (close to 40 fighter jets and helicopters), aerial defense systems, and aerial command and control systems. President Vladimir Putin described the purpose of Russia’s intervention as a battle against the Islamic State, although as of November 2015 most of the targets attacked were those belonging to the...
With December 2015 marking five years since the outbreak of the “Arab Spring,” a current assessment of Israel’s strategic situation must be based on the perspective of this period. What follows are twelve observations regarding recent political and security developments that impact on Israel’s national security and require the formulation of an overarching strategy for foreign policy and security policy for the coming five years.
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...
The terror attacks in Paris attributed to the Islamic State exposed severe intelligence failures and a lack of cooperation – or a willingness to cooperate – among European countries in the struggle against the Islamic State, and assigned the threat, yet once more, to a high position on the international agenda. It is almost certain that the Paris attacks will change, to some extent, the conduct of the European countries in their struggle against terror within their borders, especially against the backdrop of the intelligence-security...
The Islamic State burst onto the Middle East scene as an entity whose conduct and very essence challenge the existing regional order. With its military conquests in Iraq and Syria, its establishment of branches elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond, its state-like governance in the areas under its control, and the cruelty it typically exhibits, the Islamic State has become the focus of regional and international interest and concern. The articles compiled in this volume examine ways of dealing with one of the most salient military,...
