Ayoon Wa Azan (They are all against Syria)

When we read that the United States and Russia have agreed on Syria, I find this phrase to be more accurate if read in the Arab colloquial: When we say that two agreed on another, this means they are both working together against him. The agreement in Geneva was not against the Syrian regime alone, but also against the Syrian people. To be sure, dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal while Israel, armed with nuclear weapons, continues to occupy the Golan Heights means that Syria will be left without weapons against Israel if the regime were changed immediately, or with the end of Bashar al-Assad’s term in the summer of 2014. In truth, the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has told Russia and the United States publically that he wants to fully strip Syria of its chemical weapons. I hold the regime fully responsible for this situation. The Syrian regime dug its own grave by using chemical weapons against its people. Now, it has agreed to join the chemical weapons non-proliferation treaty as though this will save it. But the regime has only to look at the example of Muammar Gaddafi, who contacted Britain after the 2003 Iraq war offering to destroy his chemical weapons, and despite the fact that these were destroyed, this did not stop Britain, France, and the United States from seeking to topple him and kill him later. Before that, Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons in Halabja, and then destroyed his chemical arsenal following his defeat in Kuwait in the presence of international inspectors. Yet all this did not stop the invasion of Iraq on falsified premises, and one million of his people along with Saddam Hussein were subsequently killed. The Syrian opposition is not much smarter than the regime either. The opposition wants the United States and Western powers to strike the regime, but fails to see that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is run by Israel and serves only the interests of Israel. I read English translations from the Israeli press every day, as well as translated Israeli TV and radio news segments, and reports published by their think tanks. What I know for certain is that Israel does not want the ouster of a regime that has not fired a single bullet across the border in 40 years, and has not responded to four Israeli attacks this year alone. Israel only wants to destroy the military capabilities of the regime while maintaining it in power, defenseless against Israel’s nuclear weapons. On the Syrian side, there is a series of mistakes, and on the Western side, there is a plan to destroy Syria. The regime is committing crimes against its people, facilitating the plan drafted by Israel and implemented by the Western powers. Now, I read that Syria has a thousand tons of sarin gas and mustard gas, and then I read that the United States needed 28 years and $35 billion to dismantle its stockpiles of chemical weapons after the international agreement on banning them. However, the deal reached in Geneva requires that all chemical weapons storage sites be accounted for and the devices for mixing chemical agents destroyed by November. Then the entire arsenal is supposed to be destroyed by summer 2014. In other words, the deal asks Syria to accomplish what the United States itself could not. Is imposing impossible conditions therefore deliberate to justify a future strike on Syria? The opposition is calling for a strike on the regime, but I see a strike as being against the regime, the opposition, and every Syrian citizen. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, said that if diplomacy fails then his country would remain prepared to act (act how?), adding that chemical weapons are an affront to human dignity, and that the world must be free from the fear of chemical weapons being used against children. This statement is true but incomplete, because it ignores nuclear weapons, which the United States used in Japan, and the whole world saw the consequences with hundreds of thousands of people instantly obliterated, and thousands more killed in the years that followed from radiation poisoning. President Obama did not mention their threat on all of humanity because his country and Israel possess them, and they do not want any Arab country to have similar capabilities against Israel. They don’t even want these countries to have chemical weapons as a kind of guarantee against Israel’s WMDs. They are all against Syria and its people, and the regime is to blame for providing them with pretexts. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arab Today.