The regime in Damascus pushed towards Israel's depiction as being a party in the internal fighting alongside the opposition in Syria, or at least tried to show that the Israeli raids against Syrian military positions fall in the context of the confrontation linked to the conflict in the Middle East. This is all part of the regime's propaganda to justify its stringency towards the popular political demands and its insistence on remaining in power at whichever cost, but also to justify its methodic destruction of the Syrian urban structure and the collective massacres targeting the Syrian people. However, the Israeli air raids against Syrian positions –which the regime thought it was able to exploit in its favor by triggering Arab and international condemnations against the Israeli hostile behavior – have nothing to do with the Syrian domestic situation or the Israeli conflict. They are rather a message to the Syrian command, saying it violated the red line drawn to regulate Syrian-Israeli relations following the October war. This was the line based on which the late President Hafiz al-Assad was allowed to enter Lebanon in 1976 and the Syrian army was allowed to reach the Lebanese South, without this constituting any threat or provocation to Israel. The balance established by Israel with the support of the United States relied on one simple rule: ensuring Israeli military freedom of action in the region by land, sea and air, guaranteeing Israeli military superiority, and preventing the other party from acquiring anything which might threaten this superiority, including nuclear weapons. The Syrian regime coexisted with this red line, even during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon which witnessed Syrian-Israeli land battles in the Lebanese Bekaa, without these battles turning into an open war. Hence, the line was sustained. The Syrian respect of this red line constituted a mechanism of governance and foreign support, resulting in the Taif Accord which earned Arab and international backup to enhance Damascus' tutelage over Lebanon. Through this tutelage, the regime walked on the edge of the line by sponsoring and arming Hezbollah, without violating the rules. In the meantime, the Syrian-Israeli military front remained calm. Israel, which always praised the Syrian side's respect of its commitments to the red line, carried out raids inside the Syrian territories to attract the regime's attention to the fact that it has violated this line, whether by harboring elements on death row in Israel, especially Palestinian leaders, arming Hezbollah, or seeking the development of untraditional weapons. The Syrian regime for its part cooperated by abstaining from responding to the Israeli attack, while the refrain which it always reiterated and was repeated yesterday in regard to its refusal to be lured in and its selection of the right time and place to respond, constitutes the only available means for it to say it understood the message. It is thus avoiding war with Israel, one which is unwanted by both sides. Since the October war and since disengagement in the occupied Golan, Israel has not carried out one raid inside the Syrian territories in the context of a war which never erupted to begin with between the two sides. Even when Syrian-Israeli clashes broke out in Lebanon on the eve of and during the invasion, the operations were limited to Lebanon, and Israel never launched any attacks against the Syrian territories. Hence, the last Israeli raids on the Syrian military positions near Damascus came in response to the violation of the red line, represented this time around by the smuggling of sophisticated Iranian missiles to Hezbollah, ones which could be anti-aircraft or anti-ship missiles that pose a threat to the Israeli freedom of action regulated by the red line. In any case, these Israeli raids constitute a violation of Syrian sovereignty and a hostile act against the Syrian territories. Consequently, they deserve condemnation, denunciation and an action to prevent their repetition. But at the end of the day, the Syrian regime is the one that accepted the conditions of the red line which grants Israel the right to interfere, and is the one fueling the dubious approach towards war and peace with Israel.
