The Syrian Uprising: Implications for Israel

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has come out with a Jerusalem Issue Brief on the current Syrian protests and what they mean for Israel. Below is a summary. The full article is here.

The Syrian Uprising: Implications for Israel

Eyal Zisser

• In Syria, the story is the emergence of social groups from the periphery and their struggle to gain access to power and take over the center. The emergence of the Baath party and the Assad dynasty in the 1960s involved a coalition of peripheral forces led by the Alawites, but many others joined who came from the periphery. Now, because of socioeconomic reasons, the periphery has turned against the regime.

• Before the uprising, Bashar al-Assad was supported by the Islamic and radical movements in the Middle East. Most Muslim Brothers supported him - in Jordan, Egypt, and Hamas. Now they have turned their back on him, led by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on a global scale, who reminds them that, after all, Bashar is an Alawite and supported by the Shiite camp.

• Turkey, under Prime Minister Erdogan, had become a close ally of Syria. But Erdogan has no reservations regarding the possibility that Muslim radicals might come to power in Syria if Bashar falls. On the contrary, the Sunni radicals and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are Erdogan's close allies, as is Hamas. So Turkey has nothing to lose if Bashar falls.

• If Bashar falls, the situation is likely to be similar to that of earlier decades, with a very weak central regime. This could lead to border incidents with Israel, but not a war, with terrorist acts that a weak regime cannot prevent.

• The Syrian opposition will eventually take over and, as in the case of Egypt, they know that their interests lie with friendship with Western countries like the United States, and not with Iran. So in the long run, a new Syrian regime might be better for Israel than this current regime.
  

I am not so sure that Egypt will turn to the US, considering the growing strength of the Muslim Brotherhood on the Arab Street, and, as I wrote yesterday, there are indications that Egypt is in fact turning to Iran.


If Syria does follow the Egyptian model, would it too fall under Iranian influence?


Prof. Eyal Zisser is the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and former Head of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History and of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, both at Tel Aviv University. He is a leading expert on Syria and has written extensively on the history and modern politics of Syria, Lebanon, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Among his books are: In the Name of the Father: Bashar al-Asad's First Years in Power, Lebanon: the Challenge of Independence and Assad's Syria at a Crossroads. This Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on his presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on June 16, 2011.

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