Are Netanyahu, Liberman pushing Israel to war?
Instead of Israel’s traditional discrete approach on retaliating fire from the north, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman are multiplying their provocative declarations.
At the start of his Knesset faction's meeting on Oct. 23, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, the chairman of Yisrael Beitenu, dropped a bombshell. "As for the rocket fire in the north," he confided, "it was not 'leakage' but a deliberate attack by a local cell operated by Hezbollah. [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah personally gave an order to exclude the [Bashar] al-Assad regime. That is why I call on the Assad regime, which we consider responsible for everything that happens on Syrian soil, and on the Russian forces stationed there to restrain Hezbollah."
Liberman was referring to four rockets fired from Syrian territory into the Israeli-held Golan Heights on Oct. 21. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the rocket fire was not "leakage" resulting from fighting in the Syrian part of the Golan Heights between troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels, but an intentional attack on Israel. Then the defense minister himself announced that the order to fire the rockets was given by none other than Nasrallah and that a local terror cell carried it out without Assad even knowing about it. Nevertheless, Liberman made a point of placing the onus of responsibility for restraining Hezbollah on Assad and his Russian allies.
