Brig. Gen. (res.) Chanan Geffen, former commander of Unit 8200 in the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, told JNS on Tuesday that “the forces that seized power in Syria surprised everyone, including, in my opinion, the rebels.”

Geffen added that “the disintegration of the Syrian army, which I’ve been following for almost 50 years, surprised everyone in an amazing way,” and created a vacuum ripe in opportunities.

“I do not remember a time in history when we faced a similar case in the region,” Geffen said.

Gefen noted that the fate of Syria’s chemical weapons was a matter of international concern. Previously, there was a common assumption that the Assad regime would not use unconventional weaponry against Israel, he said, and therefore Israel mainly left chemical facilities in Syria alone.

Once Assad’s regime fell, Israel wasn’t willing to engage in any gambles. ”This time, [the Israeli Air Force] went in a much more aggressive manner, also against the stockpiles,” he said. “It appears as if the IAF used really penetrating warheads, and everything they had in the arsenal, to destroy the Syrian stockpiles, including production facilities in the chemical domain.”

The other targets that Israel attacked, including air defense systems, naval missiles, and weapons depots, have been known to Israeli intelligence for decades, Gefen said, adding: “I must say that whoever made this decision should be saluted.”

Dina Lisnyansky, an expert on the Middle East and radical Islamic movements who teaches at Tel Aviv and Reichman Universities, said: “The rebels are a kind of black box in a way. We really don’t know what to expect from them.”

Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a, known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the leader of the most powerful rebel group, Hayat Tahri Al-Sham, headed a branch of Al-Qaeda in northwest Syria in the past, although he has distanced himself from this ideology, she said.

Nevertheless, the ideological Salafist roots of some of the rebels are similar to those of Al-Qaeda, Lisnyansky warned, and the “manner in which they led the rebellion and their rhetoric on social media was very clearly Salafist. They very clearly see what they are doing in Syria as an Islamic directive, a religious directive, of deposing a tyrant who is abusing the weak. The fact that this tyrant [Bashar Al-Assad] is not a Sunni, but rather an Alawite, and is seen as a Shi’ite by the rebels, makes it a doubly more compelling religious directive.”

Therefore, Lisnyansky believes that the rebels are unpredictable, despite some positive indications such as al-Julani saying that he wants to cooperate with neighboring countries, including Israel, naming it specifically.

Nevertheless, she added, “We do not know fully what the intentions are” and “Israel did not want to gamble.”

Turkey’s influence on the rebels adds to the uncertainty, Lisnyansky continued, warning, “If Turkey wanted to create some shared border with Israel [via rebel groups under its control], this could harm Israel, and this is also something that needed to be taken into account.”

Professor Eyal Zisser, vice-rector of Tel Aviv University and holder of the Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair in Contemporary History of the Middle East, told JNS that the reason for Israel’s move is concern about the unknown, specifically the scenario that Syria’s new rulers “will turn out to be Islamists dangerous to Israel, and hence the desire to deny them military capabilities.”

The chaos in Syria is also an issue, and the possibility exists that weapons could fall into the hands of rebel groups who wish to attack Israel.

“However, my concern is that we exaggerated a little bit, and with a very aggressive move, we needlessly pushed ourselves into the turmoil,” Zisser argued. “Now, everyone is looking at us. Without this, we would not have been on the Syrian agenda and no one would be interested in us, and no one would have been particularly hostile to us.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)