The Israeli raids: goals and the right to respond

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Away from the game of scoring points in the political debates between who is standing in the axis of the resistance especially with the Syrian country and Hezbollah as a leader of the resistance, and who is standing in the other axis which starts from Washington and does not end with Al-Qaeda organization passing by Riyadh, Ankara, Paris, and Tel Aviv, although this party is acting hostilely against Damascus and the Southern suburb. The two Israeli processes against Syria over the days open a systematic obligatory discussion that imposes clarifying the dimensions, meanings, goals, and the conclusions, and explaining the meaning of the response, its right, and its position in the deterrence equations and the track which is wanted by the Syrian country along with the resistance regarding the new engagements rules which are drawn by the announced positions of responding to any aggression.

There are three simultaneous dimensions in the processes that is not possible to separate, they are coinciding with the clear deterrent speech of the Syrian country and the resistance against every Israeli aggression, especially against every air strikes since the raids which targeted the Syrian sites in Al Quneitra and which are followed by launching Syrian ground-air missiles against Israeli aircrafts in the Syrian airspaces, that have obliged them to leave the airspaces. The attacks in their direct meaning are a clear message of challenge at least politically and in media for the announced position of Syria and the resistance and a clear attempt for embarrassment and provocation.

The second dimension of these attacks does not stem from the field but from its moral coincidence with the ongoing military shifts in Aleppo and other Syrian areas in favor of the Syrian army and the resistance, they send dual message. The first part is moral, it shows the Israeli concern of what is going on, and says that the Syrian victories on the armed groups which were supported by Israel publicly and on which they depend to sabotage and to overthrow Syria must not be understood by the Syrian leadership and the resistance as a deterrence against Israel and an impressing of its military interferences and interventions. Second, these attacks grant  the militants a moral even small or ineffective dose that Israel was not ready to involve in predicative direct support that changes the course of battle, but it says to them that the Syrian country and its allies are not free and do not dominate on the regional military scene, moreover Israel is still strong, capable,  and it could be depended on its strength if that was as a source of advantage in the desperate confrontations which are waged by the armed groups, but in depth the processes remain a message to Syria and the resistance about the phase after the victory on the armed groups.

The third dimension is drawn by the details of the processes, and the content of the professional intelligence message; they did not target neither specific sites nor gatherings, nor equipment, nor convoys, nor operational rooms, this is not due to the absence of the ability to identify painful sites, but the desire to neutralize the message away from any dimension of that kind, because this may lead to response that makes the strikes lose their mission. So this does not aim to lead to losses or targeting sites or weapons which were afflicted by the aggression, but to send a message that has another goal, and thus making the response according to the intended content. The second detail is that the two aggressions have been carried out by two different means, one by airstrike and the other one by surface –to – surface missiles. In case of the airstrike the Israeli has intended to target from outside the Syrian airspaces and to be committed not to violate them which means that the two successive aggressions have not intended to target specific objectives, but they sent a message that Israel is determined to continue drawing new engagement rules in the phase of the Russian deployment in Syria and its implications and the stage of the Syrian victory on the armed groups, so that allows it to target objectives in Syria, but it takes into consideration the Syrian deterrent message which is related to the stage after the entry of network of S300 missiles, and the Russian cover of the Syrian airspaces, that imposes the prevention of violating the Syrian airspaces, however these strikes are capable of compensating the lack and the imbalance by adopting two means they are surface- to -surface missiles and the raids from outside the Syrian airspace. The third detail is that the geographical range of the movement of these two alternatives to compensate the prevention of entering the Syrian airspaces determines is an additional dimension in the engagement rules. The maximum range of  the surface- to -surface missiles which are owned by Israel and which do not belong to the ballistic missiles and which their usage alone can agitate a warfare of missiles is sixty kilometers, it is the distance which separates between the site of launching the missiles which fell in the vicinity of Mazzeh military Airport from the hill of Abi Nada in the occupied Golan and Mazzeh Airport, it is sixty kilometers as the distance from the point where the Israeli aircrafts attacked Al Sabboura area in the southern of Damascus from inside the Lebanese airspace. Practically the message here is an Israeli offer of  new engagements rules committed to the red line which was drawn by Syria by preventing the violation of the Syrian airspaces, and a military red line which is the depth of sixty kilometers along the border lines of the occupied Golan and along the Syrian Lebanese border lines. It is clear that the goals are specific for Israel to act within this range, it is everything related to the presence of the resistance on one hand and the spreading of refracting balance with Israel weapons within this range on the other hand.

The military technical strategic and tactical context of the Israeli strikes reaches to show the obvious success of Syria in drawing a red line that protects the Syrian airspaces and paves the way for the field debate through fire messages about the new rules which Israel wanted to draw. Here the right to respond which Syria and the resistance stick to can be discussed through two equations, first, by deleting any function of the Israeli aggression in the battles of the Syrian army and the resistance with the armed groups through continuing exerting pressure on these groups towards achieving the decisive victories. This has happened and now is happening in Aleppo and elsewhere. Second, it is the most important and the long term one is by drawing a fiery equation that is capable of responding to the challenge which was drawn by the Israeli strikes by devoting the inviolability of the Syrian airspaces on one hand, or to resort or at least to confine the Israeli fire to the maximum geographical margin, by drawing a deterrence equation without going to war on the other hand, this is military strategic intelligence deliberate challenge in front of the leading minds of the Syrian army and the resistance, where the test must not be subject to the timing of the Israeli movement or to the provocation of the debate under the question of where is the military response?

Surely the response is close and it is certain that its effect will be as the effect of the qualitative process of Shebaa Farms two years ago, when Israel tried to draw new engagement rules in Al Quneitra process.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,