Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, said Monday that his country is closer to a full-blown military conflict along its northern border than people think.
In a wide-ranging interview with US news site Politico, Dermer reiterated Israel’s assertion that it will not tolerate the presence of Iranian proxies in Syria.
“If Iran is not rolled back in Syria, then the chances of military confrontation are growing. I don’t want to tell you by the year or by the month. I’d say even by the week,” he warned.
Tehran was responsible for stoking the tensions in Syria, he said. “Because the more they push, we have to enforce our red lines, and you always have the prospects of an escalation, even when parties don’t want an escalation, because we will not allow Iran to establish that presence and establish another terror front against Israel in Syria,” he added.
Asked exactly how likely war was, Dermer replied, “I wouldn’t put a percentage on that, but I think it is higher than people think.” He also asserted that the likelihood of conflict in Lebanon, where the powerful Iranian proxy Hezbollah is based, is higher now than it was two years ago.
“Absolutely. There’s no question. And it’s much higher in Syria,” he said. “I mean Assad basically is a vassal of the Iranian regime. And the forces that are on the ground, Shia militias and Hezbollah.”
Israel has long warned that Iran is trying to establish a permanent presence in Syria as part of its efforts to control a land corridor from Iran through to the Mediterranean Sea, as it attempts to expand its influence across the Middle East.
On Friday night, Israeli jets reportedly hit an Iranian military base being constructed in Syria, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Israel’s northern border, reportedly killing as many as 12 Iranian military personnel. Satellite images published on Monday showed the destruction at that site, the al-Qiswah base south of Damascus. There were reports of another air strike late on Monday
The United States had eight capitals before settling on Washington, DC. So who are the Americans to deny Israelis’ right to determine their own?
Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin argued along those lines last week at a conference about Jerusalem’s legal status, urging the US administration to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel’s eternal capital.
As opposed to other countries, Israel has only ever had one capital city, Elkin noted.
“No one denies that Washington is the capital of the United States,” Elkin said. “No other country would presume to suggest that New York or Los Angeles would be a more fitting capital for the United States, and yet with Israeli this is the case.”
On Monday, US President Donald Trump failed to sign a waiver that would postpone the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Such a waiver has been required by US law every six months since 1995, in the absence of actually moving the embassy. He is widely expected to issue a waiver later this week.
But at the same time, he is also reportedly poised to publicly recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move welcomed by Israel and dreaded by the Palestinians — who claim the eastern part of the city as their capital — and the entire Arab and Muslim world.
But will Trump recognize all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, or only its Western part, as Russia did earlier this year? Depending on the wording of his expected declaration, Israelis may end up disappointed.
When the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on April 6 saying that Moscow considers “West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Israeli officials remained mum. It stands to reason that some of them rejoiced over the first-ever recognition by a foreign power of Israeli sovereignty over any part of city. But they also realized that recognizing only the Western part of it would appear to deny Israel’s claims to the eastern part, including the Old City, which it captured in 1967 and subsequently effectively annexed.
Russia’s statement, for instance, specifically said that Moscow views “East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state.” Not wanting to anger the Arab world and hoping to keep alive his dream of brokering the “ultimate” Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, Trump could choose a similar formulation.
Would that be good or bad for Israel?
Prof. Shlomo Slonim, a Hebrew University expert on US politics and constitutional law:
“Recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a step toward redividing the city,” he said.
Ministers Yariv Levin and Miri Regev would likely agree with Slonim. Last week, they threatened to withdraw state funding from the upcoming Giro d’Italia cycling tournament if organizers continued to say the race would take place in “West Jerusalem.”
“In Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, there is no east or west. There is one unified Jerusalem,” the two Likud minister said in a joint statement. The event organizers quickly apologized and removed the word “west” from their press material.
The 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which was passed by large majorities in the Senate and the House but was left unsigned by then-president Bill Clinton and unimplemented by every president since, is very clear about the parts of the city that it refers to.
“Jerusalem should remain an undivided city,” it says in Section 3. Since then, countless Congressional resolutions have reaffirmed the US lawmakers’ conviction that a united Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the Jewish state.
In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Trump thus has three options, said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on US politics at Bar-Ilan University.
“He can either say ‘Jerusalem,’ ‘West Jerusalem’ or ‘United Jerusalem.’ There is debate about the right wording even within the administration,” he said.
Most likely, Trump will merely say “Jerusalem,” thus allowing all sides to interpret his statement as they wish, Gilboa speculated. Israel will then be able to cite the law and the president’s previous commitments in arguing he meant the entire city. The Palestinians, meanwhile, will be able to cling to the hope that he was only referring to West Jerusalem.
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