It is widely realized now that the fall of President Bashar Assad\u2019s regime would leave Syria riven by bitter ethnic, religious, and ideological conflict that could splinter the country into smaller enclaves. Already there has been a demographic shift in this direction, as both Sunnis and Alawites flee the most dangerous parts of the county, seeking refuge within their own particular communities. Furthermore, it is widely believed in Syria that, as the entire country becomes too difficult to secure, the Assad regime will retreat to an Alawite redoubt in the northern coastal region as a fallback position.<\/p>\n
Syrian Kurds, about ten percent of the country\u2019s population, are also interested in gaining autonomy or joining with a larger Kurdistan. The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD)\u2014linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has engaged in a separatist insurgency in Turkey\u2019s Kurdish southeast region for nearly three decades\u2014has gained control of key areas in northeast Syria. While Turkey has supported the Syrian opposition, it is terrified of a Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria, believing that it could provide a safe haven for staging attacks into Turkey. Moreover, Kurdish autonomy would encourage separatist sentiment within the Turkish Kurdish minority. Turkey has threatened to invade the border areas of Syria to counter such a development and Turkish armed forces with armor have been sent to Turkey\u2019s border with the Syrian Kurdish region. A Turkish invasion would add further complexities to the fracturing of Syria.<\/p>\n
What has not been readily discussed in reference to this break-up of Syria is that the Israeli and global Zionist Right has long sought the fragmentation of Israel\u2019s enemies so as to weaken them and thus enhance Israel\u2019s primacy in the Middle East. While elements of this geostrategic view can be traced back to even before the creation of the modern state of Israel, the concept of destabilizing and fragmenting enemies seems to have been first articulated as an overall Israeli strategy by Oded Yinon in his 1982 piece, \u201cA Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.\u201d Yinon had been attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and his article undoubtedly reflected high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment in the years of Likudnik Menachem Begin\u2019s leadership. Israel Shahak\u2019s translation of Yinon\u2019s article was titled \u201cThe Zionist Plan for the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this article<\/a>, Yinon called for Israel to use military means to bring about the dissolution of Israel\u2019s neighboring states and their fragmentation into a mosaic of homogenous ethnic and sectarian groupings. Yinon believed that it would not be difficult to achieve this result because nearly all the Arab states were afflicted with internal ethnic and religious divisions, and held together only by force. In essence, the end result would be a Middle East of powerless mini-statelets unable to confront Israeli power. Lebanon, then facing divisive chaos, was Yinon\u2019s model for the entire Middle East. Yinon wrote: \u201cLebanon\u2019s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel\u2019s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.\u201d<\/p>\n Eminent Middle East historian, Bernard Lewis, who is a Zionist of a rightist hue and one of the foremost intellectual gurus for the neoconservatives, echoed Yinon with an article in the September 1992 issue of \u201cForeign Affairs\u201d titled \u201cRethinking the Middle East.\u201d In it, he wrote of a development he called \u201cLebanonization,\u201d stating \u201c[A] possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what has of late been fashionable to call \u2018Lebanonization.\u2019 Most of the states of the Middle East\u2014Egypt is an obvious exception\u2014are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity. . . . The state then disintegrates\u2014as happened in Lebanon\u2014into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions, and parties.\u201d Since Lewis\u2014 credited with coining the phrase \u201cclash of civilizations\u201d\u2014has been a major advocate of a belligerent stance for the West against the Islamic states, it would appear that he realized that such fragmentation would be the result of his belligerent policy.<\/p>\n In 1996, the neoconservatives presented to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu their study \u201cA Clean Break\u201d (produced under the auspices of an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies), which described how Israel could enhance its regional security by toppling enemy regimes. Although this work did not explicitly focus on the fragmentation of states, such was implied in regard to Syria when it stated that \u201cIsrael can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq \u2014 an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right \u2014 as a means of foiling Syria\u2019s regional ambitions.\u201d It added that \u201cDamascus fears that the \u2018natural axis\u2019 with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria\u2019s territorial integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n David Wurmser authored a much longer follow-up document to \u201cA Clean Break\u201d for the same Israeli think tank, entitled \u201cCoping with Crumbling States: A Western and Israeli Balance of Power Strategy for the Levant.\u201d In this work, Wurmser emphasized the fragile nature of the Middle Eastern Baathist dictatorships in Iraq and Syria in line with Lewis\u2019s thesis, and how the West and Israel should act in such an environment.<\/p>\n In contrast to some of the Western democracies as well as Arab states, Israel did not publicly call for Assad\u2019s removal until a few months ago. This, however, does not mean that the Netanyahu government did not support this outcome. This tardiness has a number of likely reasons, one of which being the fear that an Islamist government would replace Assad that would be even more hostile to Israel and more prone than he to launch reckless attacks. Moreover, instability in a country on Israel\u2019s border is of tremendous concern<\/a> to its security establishment. It is feared that in such a chaotic condition, Assad\u2019s massive chemical weapons arsenal and advanced surface-to-air missile systems could end up in the hands of terrorist groups like the Lebanese Hezbollah, which would not be hesitant to use them against Israel.<\/p>\n Unlike the armchair destabilization strategists and the neocons, the actual Israeli leaders, including hardline Likudniks such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have to be concerned about facing the immediate negative political consequences of their decisions even if they believe that the long-term benefits would accrue to the country. This invariably leads to the exercise of caution in regard to dramatic change. Thus, the concern about the immediate security risks cited above likely had a significant effect on their decision-making.<\/p>\n Furthermore, it could have been counterproductive for Israel to express support for the Syrian opposition in its early stages. For Assad has repeatedly maintained that the opposition is orchestrated by foreign powers, using this argument to justify his brutal crackdown. Since Israel is hated by virtually all elements in the Middle East, its open support of the opposition could have turned many Syrians, and much of the overall Arab world, against the uprising. While Israel did not openly support the armed resistance, there have been claims from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence has been providing some degree of covert support along with other Western intelligence agencies, including that of the United States.<\/p>\n Since May of this year, however, the Israeli government has become open in its support for the overthrow of the Assad regime. In June, Netanyahu condemned the ongoing massacre of Syrian civilians by Assad, blaming the violence on an \u201cAxis of Evil,\u201d consisting of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. \u201cIran and Hezbollah are an inseparable part of the Syrian atrocities and the world needs to act against them,\u201d he proclaimed. This inclusion of Iran and Hezbollah illustrates Israel\u2019s goal of using the Syrian humanitarian issue to advance its own national interest.<\/p>\n If the Assad regime were to fall, Israel would certainly be more secure with a splintered congeries of small statelets than a unified Syria under an anti-Israel Islamist regime. Consequently, staunch neoconservative Harold Rhode presents the fragmentation scenario in a positive light in his article<\/a>, \u201cWill Syria Remain a Unified State?\u201d (July 10, 2012). In contrast to what has been the conventional Western narrative of the uprising against the Assad regime, which presents a heroic Sunni resistance being brutally terrorized by government forces and pro-government Alawite militias, Rhode writes with sympathy for the pro-government non-Sunni Syrian minorities: \u201cIn short, what stands behind most of the violence in Syria is the rise of Arab Sunni fundamentalism in its various forms \u2013 whether Salafi, Wahhabi, or Muslim Brotherhood. All of those threaten the very existence of the Alawites, the Kurds, and other members of the non-Sunni ethnic and religious groups.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is therefore much easier to understand why the ruling Alawites feel they are fighting a life and death battle with the Sunnis, and why they believe they must spare no effort to survive. It also explains why most of Syria\u2019s other minorities \u2013 such as the Druze, Ismailis, and Christians \u2013 still largely support the Assad regime.\u201d<\/p>\n For a short aside, the neoconservative background of Harold Rhode is of considerable relevance, providing further evidence for the much denied neocon support for the fragmentation of Israel\u2019s enemies. (The mainstream view is that the neocons are na\u00efve idealists whose plans to transform dictatorships into model democracies invariably go awry.) Rhode, a longtime Pentagon official who was a specialist on the Middle East, was closely associated with neocon stalwarts Michael Ledeen, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. He was also a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Bernard Lewis, with Lewis dedicating his 2003 book, \u201cThe Crisis of Islam,\u201d to him. Rhode served as a Middle East specialist for Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy during the administration of George W. Bush, where he was closely involved with the Office of Special Plans, which provided spurious propaganda to promote support for the war on Iraq. Rhode was a participant in the Larry Franklin affair, which involved dealings with Israeli agents, though Rhode was not charged with any crime. Alan Weisman, the author of the biography of Richard Perle, refers to Rhode as an \u201cardent Zionist\u201d (\u201cPrince of Darkness: Richard Perle,\u201d p.146), more pro-Israel than Perle, which takes some doing since the latter has been accused of handing classified material to the Israelis. Rhode is currently a fellow with the ultra-Zionist Gatestone Institute, for which he wrote the above article.<\/p>\n Obviously the very removal of the Assad regime would be a blow against Israel\u2019s major enemy, Iran, since Syria is Iran\u2019s major ally. Significantly, Assad\u2019s Syria has provided a conduit for arms and assistance from Iran to Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, Hamas, to use against Israel. If Israel and Iran had gone to war, these arms would have posed a significant threat to the Israeli populace. Moreover, a defanged Hezbollah would not be able to oppose Israeli military incursions into south Lebanon or even Syria.<\/p>\n A fragmented Syria removes the possible negative ramifications of Assad\u2019s removal since it would mean that even if the Islamists should replace Assad in Damascus they would only have a rump Syrian state to control, leaving them too weak to do much damage to Israel and forcing them to focus their attention on the hostile statelets bordering them. Moreover, Israel is purportedly contemplating military action to prevent Assad\u2019s chemical weapons from falling into the hands of anti-Israel terrorists. With such a divided country there is no powerful army capable of standing up to an Israeli military incursion.<\/p>\n The benefits accruing to Israel from the downfall of the Assad regime and the concomitant sectarian fragmentation and conflict in Syria go beyond the Levant to include the entire Middle East region. For sectarian violence in Syria is likely to cause an intensification of the warfare between Sunnis and Shiites throughout the entire Middle East region. Iran might retaliate against Saudi Arabia\u2019s and Qatar\u2019s support for the Syrian opposition by fanning the flames of Shiite Muslim revolution in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia\u2019s oil-rich and majority Shiite Eastern Province. Both areas have witnessed intermittent periods of violent protest and brutal government suppression since the Arab Spring of 2011. And Iraq remains a tinderbox ready to explode into ethno-sectarian war among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, with violence already on an uptick since the formal departure of American troops in December 2011.<\/p>\n In assessing the current regional situation, American-born Barry Rubin, professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya, Israel) and director of its Global Research in International Affairs Center, writes in the Jerusalem Post<\/a> (\u201cThe Region: Israel is in good shape,\u201d July 15, 2012) : \u201cThe more I think about Israel\u2019s security situation at this moment, the better it looks.\u201d He goes on to state: \u201cBy reentering a period of instability and continuing conflict within each country, the Arabic-speaking world is committing a self-induced setback. Internal battles will disrupt Arab armies and economies, reducing their ability to fight against Israel. Indeed, nothing could be more likely to handicap development than Islamist policies.\u201d<\/p>\n It should be noted that the \u201cperiod of instability and continuing conflict\u201d in the Middle East region has been the result of regime change and is in line with the thinking of Oded Yinon who, along with the other aforementioned geostrategic thinkers, pointed out that the major countries of the Middle East were inherently fissiparous and only held together by authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n America\u2019s removal of Saddam in a war spearheaded by the pro-Israel neoconservatives served to intensify Sunni-Shiite regional hostility and, in a sense, got the destabilization ball rolling. Iran is targeted now, and Israel and its neocon supporters seek to make use of dissatisfied internal elements, political and ethnic\u2014the radical MEK, democratic secularists, monarchists, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Azeris\u2014 to bring down the Islamic regime. And while Saudi Arabia is currently serving Israeli interests by opposing Iran, should the Islamic Republic of Iran fall, Israel and their supporters would likely turn to Saudi Arabia\u2019s dismemberment, seeking the severance of the predominantly Shiite, oil-rich Eastern Province, with some neocons already having made such a suggestion\u2014e.g., Max Singer, Richard Perle, and David Frum (schemes which have been put on ice while Israel and its supporters have focused on Iran). If everything went according to plan, the end result would be a Middle East composed of disunited states, or mini-states, involved in intractable, internecine conflict, which would make it impossible for them to confront Israeli power and to provide any challenge to Israel\u2019s control of Palestine. The essence of Yinon\u2019s geostrategic vision of Israeli preeminence would be achieved.<\/p>\n __________________________<\/p>\n Stephen J. Sniegoski is the author of <\/em>The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n