Watershed Bush Success: Afghanistan to Forge Diplomatic Ties with Israel

Israel Wants Assad 'Bloodied, Not Beaten'

While Israel has complained bitterly for months that Syria is actively aiding and abetting terrorism both from Lebanon and inside Israel, it is not interested in seeing Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime fall, a senior diplomatic official said Saturday night.

The official said Israel was concerned that if Assad were to be toppled as a result of international isolation and pressure, this could unleash a civil war and the type of chaos similar to that now taking place in Iraq, which could spill over to Israel's northern border.

?Infighting, chaos and civil war in Syria, like that taking place in Iraq, is not necessarily beneficial to Israel,? the official said. On the other hand, the official said Assad's collapse could lead to the emergence of a pro-Western and Western-backed leader in the same mold as Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) who would likely have difficulty asserting his authority.

In this case, the official said, Israel might then come under considerable international pressure to ?prop him up? by entering into negotiations with him over the Golan Heights. ?An Abu Mazen on Israel's northern border is not necessarily in our interests,? he said.

Israel was interested in Syria changing its behavior, but not necessarily its regime, the official said.

It is stunning that this official could have learned nothing from the absolute failure of left-wing ideas such as believing that terrorists could have their behavior changed by outside pressure. Oslo, for example, was based on an utterly wrong prediction that terrorists would impose strongman rule that would lead to a crackdown on Hamas without democratic restraints to action such as "Bagatz [the Supreme Court] or B'tselem [a leading human rights group]", as the late Prime Minister Rabin would frequently say.

It is worth noting that Israel's government is a coalition of forces who is often paralyzed by the internally competing forces. The unnamed official in the above article is almost certaily a leftist. Note that later in the same article, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, an ideological conservative, expressed support for Syrian regime change based on his agreement with the Bush Arab democracy project:

"Our interest is to tell the world that Syria is implicated up to its neck in terrorism, a terrorism that is directed not just against Israel but against coalition forces in Iraq,? he said. ?And this is why it is in the interest of the entire world that there is another state in Syria, one that is freer and more democratic."

The utter miscalculation of the above-named official is evidenced by the watershed event announced today:
Afghanistan 'to Open Ties with Israel'

While Afghanistan is not the first country to forge diplomatic relations with Israel, it appears to the first "true" one. The others were pragmatic tactics of hostile countries whose ultimate goal is still to undermine Israel.