Attacking a hot reactor was liable to create tremendous environmental pollution. Summary. Rescue workers said many children were among those killed or injured in the suspected chemical attack in Idlib. WebThe Bombing of Shallal occurred on 23 January 1965 during the War over Water when the Israeli Air Force bombed the Syrian water pumping station at Shallal to prevent the I am able to defeat Syria, said Olmert in that conversation, but I need you to act there specifically because of the Iranian nuclear program.. Rubble was scattered around the building and the place looked fairly neglected, perhaps intentionally so. There, his deputy had already convened the men of the General Staff. At that same time, hundreds of people on the ground began suffering symptoms consistent with reaction to a nerve agent, according to the doctors and nurses who treated them. It isnt there any more.. The plan was that Assad would lead a company from al-Hariri's brigade to capture the air base before dawn to prevent air strikes. When the material taken from the computer was received in Israel, it was found to include about 35 photographs from inside the mysterious building in the Syrian desert. If the ground-to-air-systems wake up, you are in a vipers nest. A structure built on top of the reactor to conceal it. We began to suspect that there, in broad daylight, a reactor was hiding.. Assad sent an emissary to tell the commanders that he would start shelling the base if they did not surrender. A quiet and relatively clandestine action would probably be perceived in Syria less emotionally but in such a case, there would be no certainty that the nuclear threat had been eradicated. This state was planned to be a new Arab kingdom, and not just Syrian, and the state espoused Arab nationalism and pan-Islamic policies. [8][9] The Arab countries eventually abandoned their project. As far as is known, it was carried out without the advance permission or involvement of Iran or Syria. I looked at them. On Tuesday, September 4, the air force conducted its last mock maneuver in advance of the attack. On December 19, 2003, a Saturday morning, I turned on the radio and heard on a news broadcast that the Americans and the British had persuaded Libya to dismantle its nuclear program, says Amnon Sufrin, who was then head of the intelligence division at the Mossad. While the conspirators of the military committee were all young, the sitting regime had been slowly disintegrating and the traditional elite had lost effective political power.[20]. The disagreement between them was a meeting between a certified lightweight who had never approved any real operational planning (Olmert) and a professional who had engaged in that for decades, from the days of Sayeret Matkal (the elite commando force Barak had led), and up through the weekly discussions on operations and incursions in the defense ministers and the chief of staffs offices (Barak). Half a year later, the commander of the shadow army was attending a banquet at his holiday home in the Syrian seaside town of Latakia when he was shot by snipers from a boat. Meir Dagan was skeptical about the findings; Syria was not a top priority for Mossad activity and the assessment did not constitute a breakthrough in the gathering of substantial proof. Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? Before taking control, the Ba'ath Party gambled that it would be allowed to share power with Gamal Abdel Nasser in the United Arab Republic (UAR). The spokesman also described the effectiveness of the US strike as "extremely low", saying only 23 missiles had reached Shayrat. The first research breakthrough occurred in November 2006. The technology experts at MI located the plans of the British original. Satellite imagery obtained by Stratfor that December showed construction work to improve the airbase. Barak, however, began raising reservations. The planes took off from Ramon and Hatzerim and headed northward along the shore of the Mediterranean, with ample use of electronic warfare as camouflage. In the week the prime minister went to Washington, a person who did not share Bushs enthusiasm for Olmert returned to the core of decision-makers in Israel: Ehud Barak. [21] The Damascus faction was the enemy of the military committee because of their support for Nazim al-Kudsi's Government and the Hawranist were considered as rivals because of their stance against pan-Arabism. There is a tremendous explosion that you see in the darkness and after that, total destruction. They put on the table an intelligence finding of the type rarely encountered in this country. However, Israel began to pay serious attention to that inclination only after the discovery of a serious intelligence gap in another country: Libya. According to most observers, including Johnston himself, the Arab non-adoption of the plan was not total rejection. At a distant and isolated site called Al Kibar, less than a kilometer west of the Euphrates River, the Cube aroused their interest in particular. The senior members of the newly established regime were Umran, Jadid and at last, Assad. Had it not been for his carelessness and the Mossads brilliant work, it is doubtful that the operation to destroy the reactor would have taken place. [13], The Ba'ath Party faced a significant dilemma: take power through competitive elections or forceful takeover. Some 59 cruise missiles were We had satellite pictures of a large building in the middle of the desert, with no explanation, says the MI chief at the time, Gen. But the flight to the target was relatively calm, without our getting discovered and without any direct threat. The then-newly appointed chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, found an army that was depressed and mired in a deep crisis after some of its top brass had resigned, while others were still fighting the conclusions of the internal investigations and on edge about what might be said about them in the final report on the Second Lebanon War. 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It had never happened that they came to an Israeli prime minister and told him: Very close to your home something is being built that could destroy the state. There is no in-between. Its a very long flight, secret, on a dark night and a low altitude of 100 meters above sea level. The Alawites, the Druzes and the Isma'ilis for instance, were religious groups with low social class who began to embrace a radical form of Arab nationalism, e.g. The weather along the way surprised us in a number of places. Everything goes according to the advance briefing. Assad was building a plutonium nuclear reactor, he argued. We were very focused on the escape route because it could elicit surprises.. We started to back-analyze the Libyan program and try to figure out where else in the region similar programs could be hiding.. In the Israeli defense establishment, the concern was that if the diplomatic channel were employed, Assad was liable to position anti-aircraft batteries near the reactor or even to establish something like a kindergarten there as a human shield. The prime minister was also afraid of a leak to the media by American officials who opposed an Israeli attack. The researchers believed that this was the sign of the existence of a cooling system, an essential element in a reactor. The dilemma Israel faced with respect to the choice between effectiveness and secrecy did not end with the question of the operation itself. Shelly said to us: You are champions.. It was then 2:00 A.M. on Wednesday. The Syrian conflict began unfolding 11 years ago, in early March 2011. Russia is reported to have used Shayrat as a base for its Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships, The US said these were the paths of the Syrian Air Force jets that bombed Khan Sheikhoun, The Russian defence ministry claimed that only 23 Tomahawk missiles reached Shayrat, This photograph taken after the missile strike appears to show a damaged hangar at Shayrat, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. The potentially hostile unit stationed in Qatana, south-west of Damascus, did not intervene probably because Widad Bashir had taken control over communications in the Damascus area. In Israel they saw this mendacious statement without many details as reinforcement of the assessment that Assad intended to show restraint. The middle class owned the majority of small to medium properties. 19641967 military confrontations between Israel and its neighbouring Arab states, This article is about geopolitical struggle between Israel vs. Lebanon and Syria. A cell of Mossad agents from the Keshet unit broke into the apartment where Othman was staying and within less than an hour vacuumed up the information that was on the Syrian officials personal computer, which had remained in the apartment while he was taking part in the conference. Everyone there is jumping up and down in excitement, like in a Hollywood movie. The military committee did not look favourably on the civilian leadership led by Michel Aflaq, objecting to his dissolution of the Ba'ath Party during the UAR years. That evening, the wedding of the chief of staffs secretary, Liron, went ahead as planned. There is no reason for anyone to be in this area except for herdsmen. Barak, in a conversation with Haaretz, rejects the claims against him outright. The detailed intelligence helped convince those countries of the justice of the Israeli move and neutralized the possibility that the attack would become the cause of an international scandal. Some of them heard for the first time about the presence of the reactor in Syria. [26] Later that morning, the coupmakers convened at the army headquarters to celebrate. It was a square building with an area of about 1,600 square meters (more than 17,200 square feet), which was 20 meters (close to 66 feet) high. No one is going to solve them for us. At the 5th National Ba'ath Party Congress, held on 8 May 1962, it was decided to reestablish the party and keep Aflaq as Secretary General of the National Command. The southernmost, and also the largest, stretched from the south-eastern part of the Sea of Galilee eastwards to the Yarmuk River where the borders of Israel, Jordan and Syria converge. The military committee, which would launch the 8 March Revolution, shared most of their views. Amir, one of the F-15 pilots who took part in the attack, was dual: to advance the operation without most of the crews knowing what it was about and at the same time to prepare the rest of the squadron for the possibility that as a result of the operation, hostilities might break out, and all this while this group was not privy to preparations for the attack itself. At the time, the members were bound together by their goal of building a prosperous nation. It is a plutogenic reactor, the head of the Mossad told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. [The threat] at the existential level is of an unprecedented order of magnitude.. [22] The military committee ordered a group of junior officers to recruit the leading independent Colonel Ziad al-Hariri, the commander of the front facing Israel, to their cause. The material was analyzed on a Wednesday night, recalls Amnon Sufrin. [17] In an international context, the revolution took place because the state boundaries established by France were artificial and the hostility within the newly established Syria to the creation of Israel. The surrender of the 70th Armoured Brigade took longer than expected, putting Assad's forces behind schedule. There was silence. However, the Military Committee, which had expanded its membership with five new members[note 1], ensured that the Ba'athists controlled the real levers of powers. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. In the preparations for the operation, we practiced ways of arriving, implementation, routes, distances, without telling the pilots and the navigators who were taking part what the target was. After the attack, Ashkenazi sent MI chief Yadlin to the Turkish chief of staff to explain the considerations and circumstances and to reassure him that there had been absolutely no violation of Turkish sovereignty during the operation. Bidens bombing of Iraq and Syria: the normalization of war. Mobile footage of missile strike in Syria, "Obviously, the regime will maintain the certain capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons, we think, beyond this particular airfield. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. Why Now? Olmert did not ask Bush for authorization of an Israeli attack but let the president understand that he was of a mind to order the IDF to act. The politicians were waiting in suspense for the final report, which was due to be published in January 2008. Uranium fuel rods. The United Nations security council majority (excepting the USSR) voted for the resumption of work by Israel. After the coup, the Ba'athist Military committee initiated a series of purges that altered the structure of the Syrian armed forces; by replacing 90% of its officer corps with Alawites. [13] While the Ba'ath Party was strong, its decision to recruit members from across society led to tribalism and clientelism within the party. Top Israeli officials, most of them intelligence people, set out for Western countries and a number of friendly countries in the region to share the incriminating information about the secret Syrian reactor. [40] The coup attempt failed and 27 participating officers were arrested and executed. They negotiated their surrender even though, according to Assad himself, their forces could have defeated his rebel company in combat. This system created a class society reflecting urban-rural living patterns. Assad was given the task of reporting to other units that the coup had been postponed to 8 March. It was the prime minister at that time, Menachem Begin, who established the doctrine whereby Israel will not allow any of its foes in the Middle East to develop nuclear weapons. The cabinet met for a discussion in Jerusalem in the morning. We were over the target for two or three minutes. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. The disagreement here is not between those who want a war and those who oppose it. Come to think of it the court of history. Iran was the focus of our interest, Sufrin says now, but we delegated a team of researchers to examine the possibility of a nuclear program in Syria. I meet with him as a matter of course. Olmert had to take into account a reaction that was liable to include direct hits on civilian and military infrastructures, from northern Israel to the Tel Aviv area. 2023 BBC. Baraks behavior, says one of the top defense people, was simply deplorable, Especially taking into account the disagreement about bombing the nuclear sites in Iran, which erupted two years later. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved. The war is referenced in the famous US antiwar 1965 song "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire with the line "And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'". [42] Nasser also announced his withdrawal from the 17 April unity agreement.[40][42]. It was one of the Israeli army's most successful operations, but was censored for over a decade. [18], The growth of the new middle class in Syria fueled discontent since the traditional elite dominated the agrarian sector the largest sector of the economy and created most of the wealth. When he looked outside, he saw larges areas on fire, he said. USS. At 8 P.M. he summoned leader of the opposition Netanyahu to the prime ministers residence. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied ever having used chemical weapons. From the beginning, the military committee members formed state policies behind the backs of other NCRC members when the civilian leadership found out, al-Atrash said: "Why do not these gentlemen speak? And then we started to fly back, in accordance with the planning, at a low altitude. WebThe Syrian Civil War is an ongoing violent conflict in Syria between pro-democratic insurgents and Syrian President Bashar al-Assads long-standing dynastic regime. Some 59 cruise missiles were fired at the Syrian Air Force facility in response to what President Donald Trump said was a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town three days before. The war and the investigations revealed hugs gaps in the armys capabilities and the readiness of its units. Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, gives you breaking news, analyses and opinions about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. The Syrian reactor, before and after the Israeli strike. [40][41] The Army Headquarters, personally defended by al-Hafiz, and the broadcast station were attacked, and the ensuing battle left hundreds of people dead, including several civilian bystanders. You have done your bit for the people of Israel.. [18], In Syria, religious minorities were often underprivileged, and a specific ethnicity usually belonged to a specific social class. He did not revise his opinion when they sat together in sensitive deliberations in the cabinet and in smaller forums. I said to them: You are going to do something of incredible significance.
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