Benyamin Netanyahu holding up a piece of a shot down drone which supposedly stems from Iran during the 54th Munich Security Conference. Picture by Lennart Preiss/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.Israeli
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu addressed the Munich Security
Conference on 18 February 2018. Attacking Iran during his speech, he
brandished what he claimed was a piece of a drone sent into Israeli
airspace by Iran on 10 February 2018 and declared.
“Last
week [Iran’s] brazenness reached new heights, literally new
heights. It sent a drone into Israeli territory, violating Israel's
sovereignty, threatening our security. … [I]t committed an act of
aggression against Israel last week, … it sent a drone into our
airspace to threaten our people.
One
has to admire the Israeli Prime Minister’s audacity in his reaction
to a single Iranian drone entering Israeli airspace from Syria, when,
with his authority, Israeli aircrafts
have violated Syrian sovereignty on about a hundred occasions in the
past five years in the course of bombing targets in Syria (Haaretz,
17 August 2017) and Israeli
aircraft violate Lebanese sovereignty on a daily basis (Report
by UN Secretary-General, 16 November 2017).
The
Prime Minister described this incursion into Israel airspace as an
“act of aggression”. But, according to Chagai
Tzuriel, Director General of Israel’s Intelligence Ministry, the
incursion “was not an attack, but a test of the limits and rules”
(Washington
Post, 11 February 2018). And Haaretz
reported
on 13 February 2018:
“That
it was an attack mission is unlikely, as no weapon or explosives have
so far been found among the drone’s fragments, which are in
Israel’s hands.”
So,
it appears that Iran’s “act of aggression” against Israel was
committed by an unarmed drone.
Israel has been a serial violator of the sovereignty of neighbouring states
While
there have been a number of incursions into Israeli airspace since
2006 by Iranian-made drones, these were all operated by Hezbollah or
Hamas.
This is the first (and only) instance in which a drone directly
operated by Iranian military personnel entered Israeli airspace and
violated Israeli sovereignty (Haaretz,
13 February 2018).
By
contrast, Israel has been a serial violator of the sovereignty of
neighbouring states, especially Lebanon and Syria, over many years.
Lebanon
For
example, in the 4-month period from 1 July to 30 October 2017, Israel
violated Lebanon’s airspace 758 times for a total of 3,188 hours.
This information is available in a report
dated 16 November 2017 to the Security Council by the UN
Secretary-General António Guterres on the implementation of Security
Council Resolution 1701, which was passed at the end of Israel’s
war against Lebanon in 2006. The following is an extract:
“Israel
continued to violate Lebanese airspace on a daily basis, in violation
of resolution 1701 (2006) and Lebanese sovereignty. From 1 July to 30
October [2017], UNIFIL [UN Interim Force in Lebanon] recorded 758 air
violations, totalling 3,188 overflight hours, an increase of 80 per
cent compared with the same period in 2016. Unmanned aerial vehicles
were involved in over 93 per cent (707) of those violations; the
remainder involved fighter or unidentified aircraft.
“UNIFIL
protested all air violations to the Israel Defense Forces and urged
their immediate cessation. The Government of Lebanon also protested
the airspace violations to UNIFIL. Such violations of Lebanese
sovereignty undermine the cessation of hostilities and efforts to
reach a permanent ceasefire.”
So,
Israel violated Lebanese sovereignty 758 times by overflights from 1
July to 30 October 2017, that is, on average more than six per day.
Total overflight time in this period was 3,188 hours, which is longer
than the period itself.
The
Secretary-General’s report also points out that Israel is
continuing to occupy Lebanese territory, albeit a small piece
(“northern Ghajar and an adjacent area north of the Blue Line”)
in violation of resolution 1701 and Lebanese sovereignty.
Syria
Israel
has also violated Syrian sovereignty continuously for many years.
In
June 1967, it took over the Syrian Golan Heights by force and has
occupied them ever since in violation of Syrian sovereignty. In
1981, Israel annexed them. On 17
December 1981, the Security Council passed resolution 497,
demanding that Israel reverse its annexation. Israel refused to do
so and it remains in violation of resolution 497 to this day.
Since
2012, while the war has been going on in Syria, there have been
regular press reports of Israeli air attacks on targets there. The
targets were usually said to be convoys of weapons supplied by Iran
on their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon, though in 2017 the targets seem
to have been expanded.
In
general, Israel refrained from commenting on the press reports of
attacks when they appeared. However, in August 2017 Haaretz
reported:
“Israel
has attacked convoys bringing arms to Hezbollah and groups on
several Israeli fronts dozens of times over the last five years,
a top Israeli military commander has confirmed for the first time.
The number of Israeli attacks on such convoys since 2012 is
approaching triple digits, said Major General Amir Eshel, the
outgoing commander of the Israel Air Force.” (Haaretz,
17 August 2017).
Israel
has never pretended that any of these attacks were carried out in
response to military action emanating from Syria and could therefore
be justified as legitimate self-defense against Syrian aggression.
So,
Israel violated Syrian sovereignty nearly a hundred times since 2012
contrary to international law.
(Or
was it thousands of times? The
head of the Israeli Air Force Air Division, Brigadier General Amnon
Ein Dar, said recently that the Israeli Defense Forces have “carried
out thousands of missions in Syria in the last year alone”. (Ynet
News, 11 February 2018))
Iranian
threat to Israeli security
When
Russia came to the aid of the Syrian regime
at its request in September 2015, Israel was concerned that its
freedom to bomb Syrian targets would be curtailed. Russia then
controlled the skies along with the US and had air defence systems
capable of preventing Israel bombing Syrian targets if it chose to do
so. Since then Prime Minister Netanyahu has sought, and been
granted, regular meetings with President Putin on this issue. Russia
does not seem to have put restrictions on Israeli bombing in Syria,
though presumably it demands advance notification.
Iranian
forces – and its allies, Hezbollah and other Shi‘ite militias
– are also in Syria at the request of the Syrian regime.
Israel has always objected to their presence on the grounds that it
constitutes a threat to Israeli security. But, over the past year or
so, Israel’s objections have become more strident and threatening.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has sought help from Russia and the US in an
attempt to ensure that Iran and its allies would not have a permanent
presence in Syria and, in the meantime, to keep them at a distance
from the Israeli border.
But
Israel’s entreaties have met with little success, not least because
its closest ally, the US, is not in a position to have Iran and its
allies expelled from Syria. According to Israeli journalist Ronen
Bergman (New
York Times, 12 February 2018),
when a high level Israeli delegation went to Washington in August
2017 and “demanded that
any peace agreement in Syria require the removal of Hezbollah and
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps troops from the country” the
Trump administration “didn’t agree to deliver”.
Netanyahu declared that "Israel would operate in Syria how and when it sees fit"
Even
Israel’s demand that Iran and its allies be kept away from its
border has met with limited success. Thus, for example, Israel
wanted the de-escalation agreement for southwest Syria signed by US,
Russia and Jordan on 11 November 2017 to keep Iranian and allied
forces 50 or 60 kilometres away from the border, but under the
agreement the distance varies between 5 and 20 kilometres (Syria
Deal Puts Iran Too Close to Israel’s Borders,
Haaretz, 16 November 2017).
Furthermore,
the agreement gave no commitment, let alone a timetable, for the
removal of Iranian and allied forces from Syria altogether. Haaretz
reported
that “Israeli defense figures are troubled … by the fact that the
superpowers seem unwilling to take genuine measures to kick Iran out
of Syria in general, and southern Syria in particular.” On the
contrary, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, asserted that “the
presence of Iran in Syria is legitimate” and that “Russia has not
promised to ensure a withdrawal of pro-Iranian forces from Syria”
(Reuters,
14 November 2017).
In
response, Netanyahu declared that “Israel would operate in Syria
how and when it sees fit, regardless of the ceasefire agreement
between the US, Russia and Jordan that Jerusalem complained fell
significantly short of its security demands” (Ynet
News, 13 November 2018). And over the next few months, Israel
did just that, continuing to bomb military targets in Syria.
The
drone effect
Then,
on 10 February 2018, an Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace from
Syria and was shot down by an Israeli helicopter. According to
spokesman Jonathan Conricus quoted
in the Times of Israel, it was “on a military mission sent by
Iranian military forces” from an “Iranian base” in the Palmyra
area of Syria. In other words, it had been deliberately targeted at
Israel and hadn’t crossed the border into Israel inadvertently, for
example, while on a reconnaissance mission against Syrian opposition
forces in southwest Syria.
Conricus
told journalists: “This is the most blatant and severe Iranian
violation of Israeli sovereignty in the last years.” It was, in
fact, the only violation of Israeli sovereignty.
Israel
responded by attacking what was said to be the Iranian base from
which the drone had been launched. One of the eight attacking F-16
aircraft was brought down by Syrian air defence, to which Israel
responded with further attacks on air defence and other military
targets in Syria.
By
Israel’s account, Iran deliberately sent an unarmed drone on a
reconnaissance mission of some kind into Israeli air space on 10
February 2018. It had never done this before. It was almost certain
the drone would be detected by Israel and identified as Iranian,
which would enable Israel to portray Iran as an aggressor and to
justify a military response of unknown extent. Would Iran have been
so foolish as to play into Israel’s hands like that? I doubt it.
Mostly likely, the drone arrived in Israeli airspace by accident.
A
further point: Russia’s task of managing the battleground in Syria
has been made more difficult by the predictable consequences of an
Iranian drone entering Israeli air space. Iran would not have taken
a decision to launch a drone into Israel without consulting Russia,
which would have vetoed it.
However,
whether or not Iran’s action was deliberate, this (one and only)
violation of Israeli sovereignty by Iran was a godsend to Israel.
Having asserted for years that the Iranian presence in Syria was a
threat, at last Israel had something that could be presented to the
world as evidence of Iranian “aggression” and used to justify an
extensive bombing campaign against Iranian targets in Syria – which
was almost certainly Israel’s intention had President Putin not
intervened.
Putin’s
phone call to Netanyahu
According
to Amos Harel of Haaretz (Putin's
Phone Call With Netanyahu Put End to Israeli Strikes in Syria,
15 February 2018), Russia
vetoed further military action by Israel after the
second wave of bombardments against Syrian targets, which was in
response to the shooting down of an Israeli F-16 jet fighter.
At
that point “senior Israeli officials were still taking a militant
line and it seemed as if Jerusalem was considering further military
action”, he writes, but “discussion of that ended not long after
a phone call between Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”.
Ronen
Bergman agrees that “the
response to the downing of the Israeli jet was intended to be a lot
more violent.”
(New
York Times, 12 February 2018).
According to him:
“Israel
has long maintained contingency plans for a huge offensive operation
in Syria. [When the F-16 was brought down], the generals took them
out of the drawer. But the Iranians and the Syrians, along with their
Lebanese ally Hezbollah, realized that something like that was in the
offing, and let it be known that they would not let it happen without
responding. The Israelis heard this, but were not deterred. The
Israel Defense Forces went on to a war footing.
“It
soon became clear, though, who is calling the shots. The Israeli
bombardments of the air base had been dangerously close to Russian
forces. A furious phone call on Saturday morning from President
Vladimir Putin of Russia was enough to make Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu of Israel cancel the plans.”
Russia’s
public response
was directed at Israel:
“We
consider it necessary that the sovereignty and territorial integrity
of Syria and other countries in the region be respected
unconditionally. Creating threats to life and security of Russian
service personnel, who are in the Syrian Arab Republic at the
invitation of its legitimate government in order to assist the fight
against terrorists, is absolutely unacceptable.”
It
remains to be seen if Russia takes steps to curb future violations of
Syrian sovereignty or provides its Syrian ally with the means to
defend itself against further Israel violations.
