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00:00Right.
00:01Good morning.
00:02Well, Israel saw an opportunity in the vacuum caused by the end of the Assad regime to get
00:09rid of weapons that it considered threatening just across its own border.
00:14So the chemical weapons, those were the airstrikes in Damascus.
00:19Also weapons factories.
00:22Basically Israel's trying to take Syria back to the period before Iran began using Syria
00:29as a weapons hub for the transmission of armaments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
00:36And secondly, Israel is reacting, as the prime minister, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin
00:41Tam said yesterday, to prevent what he called any possibly antagonistic new government of
00:49Syria from being able to take advantage of the Syrian army's weapons against Israel.
00:55So in that context, the Israeli air force struck more than 400 planes.
01:02Basically what used to be Assad's air force is gone.
01:05Similarly, much of the Navy is gone.
01:08The Israeli army yesterday declared that it believed that in 48 hours it had gotten rid
01:15or destroyed between 70 and 80 percent of the Syrian weaponry.
01:22And if that is true, we should see a very radical halt or a very radical diminution
01:31in the amount of Israeli strikes, because most of their targets will have already been
01:37eliminated.
01:40The other matter touches on the buffer zone on the border between Israel and Syria.
01:49There Israel was accused of having overstepped even the buffer zone.
01:52In other words, the buffer zone is a no man's land between two countries.
01:56It was determined by the ceasefire agreement of 1973, and no army had previously stepped
02:03into it.
02:04This was a quiet, if not a peaceful border.
02:08The Israeli army yesterday put out an official statement saying that it had not gone beyond
02:14the borders of the buffer zone, and that this was temporary and a defensive measure.
02:20Well, some in the international community have condemned Israel's going into that buffer
02:25zone and potentially further, including some members, actors in the region.
02:31Does Israel then risk alienating partners in the Middle East and the Gulf?
02:36Absolutely, risks alienating partners and it risks provoking antagonists.
02:42The EU representative in Syria has decried this move, as has Egypt, as has the United
02:50Arab Emirates.
02:51That's an important regional diplomatic ally for Israel.
02:55I think that's probably the reason that the Israeli army issued such an unequivocal statement
03:02yesterday saying we have not taken one step beyond the borders of the buffer zone and
03:08it's only defensive.
03:09But the most important criticism has come from the brand new Syrian temporary government,
03:15the one that was just installed yesterday.
03:18It was a threatening message and it said in response to the Israeli army messages in which
03:24Israel conveyed that if you turn against us, we have a very massive counterattack ready,
03:31the Syrian rebels who are taking over power said the road to Jerusalem is open to us.
03:38So we do risk right now a flare up on what would be an inconceivable eighth front to
03:46this war that Israel is waging with so many of its regional neighbors.