It was an extraordinary process, at the end of which the reactor was destroyed., Ido Nechushtan believes that this is the kind of problem that its important for Israel to know how to solve on its own. The company's analysts said the work and the presence of newly deployed helicopters suggested the base was gaining importance for the Syrian government and Russia as they sought to counter jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State (IS) in Homs province. In the air force it was decided to brief only the top command in each of the two operational squadrons about the nature of the target that was to be attacked. Ashkenazi showed up together with many of the generals, in part so as not to arouse suspicion that something was afoot. The military committee did not look favourably on the civilian leadership led by Michel Aflaq, objecting to his dissolution of the Ba'ath Party during the UAR years. Dagan asked: Mr. The first research breakthrough occurred in November 2006. According to the plan, upon hitting the target, all the planes were required to report to the others over the communications network. The group was successful, and they promised al-Hariri that "If we succeed, you can become chief of staff. [40][41] The Army Headquarters, personally defended by al-Hafiz, and the broadcast station were attacked, and the ensuing battle left hundreds of people dead, including several civilian bystanders. The bottom 80 percent received the remainder. Ultimately, however, the bombing of the reactor would not have happened without three people who believed in the mission and pushed the operation forward, unstintingly, throughout: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Israel Air Force commander Eliezer Shkedi., >> Ten years of silence on Syria strike. According to the report, Ibrahim Othman, head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission, had come to Austria to participate in the deliberations of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The politicians were waiting in suspense for the final report, which was due to be published in January 2008. WebThe Syrian Civil War is an ongoing violent conflict in Syria between pro-democratic insurgents and Syrian President Bashar al-Assads long-standing dynastic regime. The squadrons to which the mission was assigned were brought into the picture during the month of June, and only in a limited way. [8] The failure in the 1948 ArabIsraeli War led to the downfall of the traditional elite and the rise of the military in politics. On 9 March the NCRC released Lu'ay al-Atassi from jail, promoted him to the rank of lieutenant general, appointed him commander-in-chief and NCRC chairman, the de facto head of state. Shamal. WebShallal is a village in Syria. Localities. Some 59 cruise missiles were fired at the Syrian Air Force facility in response to what President Donald Trump said was a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town three days before. However, this did not change the balance of power, and the officers still controlled the country. Peres, who as leader of the opposition at the time of the bombing of the reactor in Iraq had expressed reservations about that attack as well, surprised Olmert with the suggestion that Israel should attempt to talk with the Syrians first. Michael Hayden, the head of the CIA, wrote years later in The Washington Post that he told Bush that his agency had concluded that the site at Al Kibar was part of a nuclear weapons program and there was no other explanation for its existence. There were no political considerations behind his recommendations. The Arab states decided to deprive Israel of 35% of the National Water Carrier capacity, by a diversion of the Jordan River headwaters (both the Hasbani and the Banias) to the Yarmouk River. Olmert consulted, individually, three of the previous prime ministers: Shimon Peres (who a few months later was elected president of Israel), leader of the opposition Benjamin Netanyahu and citizen Ehud Barak. [27], The first act of the new rulers of Syria was to establish the twenty-man National Council for the Revolutionary Command (NCRC), composed of twelve Ba'athists and eight Nasserists and independents. Olmert conducted himself in this affair with courage and skill and did not shy away from making decisions. Israel has fired several missiles at Syrias border province of Quneitra, causing material damage. And it was also the start of the intense hostility between that prime minister and his defense minister, which took root during that summer of 2007, and of the impassioned war over who among the top brass in the military organizations deserved the credit. In the meantime, final preparations were under way in the air force. [d], Later, on 19 June, Chief of Staff al-Hariri led a high-ranking delegation that included Prime Minister al-Bitar, Aflaq and Education Minister Sami Droubi to Algeria for a state visit. The "War over Water", also the Battle over Water, was a series of confrontations between Israel and its Arab neighbors from November 1964 to May 1967 over control of water sources in the Jordan River drainage basin. No security arrangements fences or guards were visible there nor had batteries of ground-to-air missiles been stationed there for defense from air strikes. There is a bit of excitement before the bomb hits. The detailed intelligence helped convince those countries of the justice of the Israeli move and neutralized the possibility that the attack would become the cause of an international scandal. The military committee decided it had to capture al-Kiswah and Qatana, two military camps, seize control of the 70th Armoured Brigade at al-Kiswah, the Military Academy in the city of Homs and the Damascus radio station. The official Sana news agency reported that nine civilians living in villages near the airbase, including four children, had also been killed in the strike. The Ministry of Defence headquarters were seized without a fight, and General Zahr al-Din, the commander-in-chief, was put under arrest. Ten years of silence on Syria strike. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved. It had never happened that they came to an Israeli prime minister and told him: Very close to your home something is being built that could destroy the state. There was not much traffic in the area. In the background, of course, there was the historical memory of the Begin doctrine and the precedent of the bombing of the reactor in Iraq in 1981 (an operation in which MI chief Yadlin had been one of the eight pilots who carried out the attack). bombing In the meantime, Shkedi went to the Hatzerim and Ramon air bases to talk with the crews that would take part in the operation and to reveal the real target to most of them. The Mossad led several overseas operations as part of that intelligence gathering. I looked at them. We were very focused on the escape route because it could elicit surprises.. In his memoirs, Bush wrote that following Haydens assessment, he told Olmert at their meeting on June 19 that he could not justify an American attack on a sovereign state. The US carried out additional airstrikes targeting enemy positions and rocket launchers near Deir ez-Zor in northeast Syria following a rocket attack on coalition bases For me, today it connects with our ability to remove threats in distant countries in the third circle [meaning, Iran]. If we fail, you can disown us. Two explosive devices attached to the vehicle blew up as it passed under Jisr They negotiated their surrender even though, according to Assad himself, their forces could have defeated his rebel company in combat. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Husni al-Za'im became the first military dictator of Syria in 1949, but in 1950, military officer Adib Shishakli gained power behind the scenes, and by 1953 had established another military dictatorship. Yet in 2008, IAEA inspectors found traces of radioactive substances there, and the agency said there was a high probability that a nuclear reactor had been in operation at the site. The new defense minister believed that before any attack on the reactor, the IDF had to be 98 percent prepared, not 80 percent., With the approach of summer, temperatures inside the conference rooms also rose. A cell of Mossad agents from the Keshet unit broke into the apartment where Othman was staying and within less than an hour vacuumed up the information that was on the Syrian officials personal computer, which had remained in the apartment while he was taking part in the conference. And then a phone call came in from Dagan that there was a query from the United States, relates Shkedi. We were over the target for two or three minutes. In the preparations for the operation, we practiced ways of arriving, implementation, routes, distances, without telling the pilots and the navigators who were taking part what the target was. After the attack, Ashkenazi sent MI chief Yadlin to the Turkish chief of staff to explain the considerations and circumstances and to reassure him that there had been absolutely no violation of Turkish sovereignty during the operation. He recently recalled: I looked at the dancing guests and I said to myself: Five hours from now, we could be waking them up with sirens and Scud missiles falling in the center of the country. The area thereby functioned as one of France's colonies, and the newly established state was viewed unfavorably by most Syrians, with many of them regarding it as a vassal of European imperialism. He hoped that perhaps the George W. Bush administration would take it upon itself to destroy the reactor. Top Israeli officials, most of them intelligence people, set out for Western countries and a number of friendly countries in the region to share the incriminating information about the secret Syrian reactor. The While they failed to approve it politically, they nevertheless seemed determined to adhere to the technical details of the agreement. The then-newly appointed chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, found an army that was depressed and mired in a deep crisis after some of its top brass had resigned, while others were still fighting the conclusions of the internal investigations and on edge about what might be said about them in the final report on the Second Lebanon War. WebBy ALBERT AJI and BASSEM MROUE October 20, 2021. [2] At this stage, some movements tried to establish a Syrian identity, most notably the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, or became advocates of communism and Islamism. For combat pilots to hear a thing like that it is completely contrary to their intuition and ethos.. Capt Davis said they targeted "aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems, and radars", describing them as "things that made the airfield operate". And during the time that passed, the IDFs preparedness for war was improved immeasurably. Y. reached the conclusion that they were looking in the wrong place. For other water conflicts, see, Arab League summit meeting convened in Cairo, "Turning Water into Fire: the Jordan River as the Hidden Factor in The Six Day War", http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu18ce/uu18ce0a.htm#10.%20principles%20for%20confidence%20building%20measures%20in%20the%20jordan%20river%20watershed, http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80858e/80858E0m.htm, "An American in Palestine: Elwood Mead and Zionist Water Resource Planning, 1923-1936", Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, Wave of violence in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 194, UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 242, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War_over_Water_(Jordan_river)&oldid=1146917736, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 27 March 2023, at 19:01. An estimated three thousand families owned half of the land in Syria. A number of those who were present later observed that, as one of them put it, Gideon Frank, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, blanched and nearly fainted. Syria According to reports in the American media, his assassination was a join Mossad-CIA operation in revenge for Mughniyehs role in hijacking a TWA airliner in Beirut in 1985, and for attacking U.S. Marines in Lebanon two years earlier. The attacks were claimed by Islamic State group militants. In Olmerts circle they describe a bleak mood prevailing after the discovery. Caught in a pincer movement, the commander of the 70th Armoured Brigade, Lieutenant General Abd al-Karim surrendered to the plotters Umran took over as acting commander of the 70th Armoured Brigade. At times, Barak told someone, he had the feeling that Olmert was playing the role of a leader based on what he had seen in American movies. "It is obvious to any specialist that the decision to carry out an air strike on Syria had been taken in Washington long before the events in Khan Sheikhoun, which only served as a formal pretext," he said, explaining that a "wide range of reconnaissance and planning measures" would have been necessary. Mughniyeh was in the know about the most top-secret missions of Hezbollahs patrons, Iran and Syria. Following that, one of the F-16s was supposed to broadcast the word Arizona on long-range radio back to Tel Aviv to indicate that the target had been bombed according to plan. The spokesman also described the effectiveness of the US strike as "extremely low", saying only 23 missiles had reached Shayrat. In the underground hangar that our plane returned to, Brig. The intelligence people say they told him: There are no more question marks. To make sure the reactor would be destroyed, it was necessary to deploy tremendous firepower, in the form of a relatively extensive aerial bombardment. The United Nations security council majority (excepting the USSR) voted for the resumption of work by Israel. The contacts with North Korea were coordinated by the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Othman, and by Gen. Muhammad Suleiman, the regimes person for dark ops, who also oversaw military relations with Iran and Hezbollah. WebAluf Benn. Any report in the media was liable to awaken the Syrians out of their complacency, alter their defensive preparedness around the reactor and deny the IDF the advantage of surprise. Both of us were very excited. [7]. The operation was approved unanimously and at the armys recommendation the limited air attack option was chosen. The technology experts at MI located the plans of the British original. [45], The failure of Alwan's revolt marked the end of significant Nasserist influence in Syria's military and civilian institutions, and with the pro-Nasser forces largely defeated, the Military Committee became the sole power center of the country. Authorize the operation.. WebShayrat airbase was the target of the US' first deliberate direct attack on Syrian forces since the start of the war six years ago. The operation was the finest hour of a prime minister who just a year earlier had led Israel into a failed war in Lebanon and who less than two years later would be compelled to resign before going on to serve a prison term for crimes of corruption. If a certain weapon or one of the platforms didnt work, there would be something to cover for it, says Amir. Satellite imagery obtained by Stratfor that December showed construction work to improve the airbase. The surrender of the 70th Armoured Brigade took longer than expected, putting Assad's forces behind schedule. One of the American media organizations had asked the Pentagon a question about the presence of a nuclear installation in Syria. The air force dubbed the plan with the code name Soft Melody (the general staff operation had a different code name, Ein Habasor, while at Military Intelligence they referred to the preparations as Outside the Box). And then we started to fly back, in accordance with the planning, at a low altitude. This is the story of a single night more than a decade ago, and a daring, hair-raising operation executed by the Israeli air force, army and intelligence community that destroyed an atomic plant in northeastern Syria. Many of the people involved in the action deserve to get credit and also demand it, said one person who played a key role in planning the operation. The US military has defended as "legitimate" an air strike attack which killed dozens of people in Syria in 2019. From the beginning, the military committee members formed state policies behind the backs of other NCRC members when the civilian leadership found out, al-Atrash said: "Why do not these gentlemen speak? USS Shamal - Wikipedia The reason for the armyparty alliance in the first place was to safeguard the party from repression. American service member injured in al-Shabab attack in Somalia: On December 19, 2003, a Saturday morning, I turned on the radio and heard on a news broadcast that the Americans and the British had persuaded Libya to dismantle its nuclear program, says Amnon Sufrin, who was then head of the intelligence division at the Mossad. While the conspirators of the military committee were all young, the sitting regime had been slowly disintegrating and the traditional elite had lost effective political power.[20]. The weather along the way surprised us in a number of places. Rather, the question is whether to take a risk in order to prevent greater risks and for that reason there is no alternative to demolishing the reactor., Associates of Olmert describe an angry correspondence with Barak that day, which was conducted via messengers. [3], The mandate was feudal in character, and it rested on a semi-liberal oligarchic social base. [42] Nasser also announced his withdrawal from the 17 April unity agreement.[40][42]. Olmert implored Bush and Cheney to attack nevertheless, and argued that such a move would also help deter Iran. At the 5th National Ba'ath Party Congress, held on 8 May 1962, it was decided to reestablish the party and keep Aflaq as Secretary General of the National Command. Instead, they had become deeply hostile to pan-Arabist thought and had become radical socialists instead. 1963 Syrian coup d'tat - Wikipedia The prime minister dwelled in particular on the meaning of life in Israel under the shadow of a nuclear threat and warned that this was a condition that was liable to cause profound demoralization of Israels populace. 2023 BBC. The advisers, as well as a number of ministers, first and foremost Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, were for the most part summoned individually for personal meetings with the prime minister at his residence, where they were informed about details of the affair, mostly by Yadlin and Dagan. In 1965, there were three notable border clashes, starting with Syrian shootings of Israeli farmers and army patrols, followed by Israeli tanks and artillery destroying the Arab heavy earth moving machines that were used for the diversion plan. Its a story that ended well, says Amos Yadlin. The Nasserist officers were also given notable offices with Muhammad al-Sufi becoming Minister of Defence and Rashid al-Qutayni becoming deputy chief of staff. State media initially described the Damascus attack as a roadside bombing. [28], Umran was first given the command of the 5th Brigade in Homs, but was promoted in June to become commander of the 70th Armoured Brigade. The potentially hostile unit stationed in Qatana, south-west of Damascus, did not intervene probably because Widad Bashir had taken control over communications in the Damascus area. It was in fact his comments that pushed the IDF to present alternative plans, one of which was ultimately the one that was carried out. Our assumption was that possibly the operation would be revealed publicly, and the Syrians would respond, and then it would become the opening move in a war. I went to Olmert. Israel and the West, he said, would lose the element of surprise. The Bombing of Shallal occurred on 23 January 1965 during the War over Water when the Israeli Air Force bombed the Syrian water pumping station at I dont know what was going through his conspiratorial mind, but Baraks view was correct in my opinion: Leave no stone unturned before you make such a fateful move.. [6], The mandate was dissolved in 1946 because of a British ultimatum to France, and Syria became an independent country on 17 April 1946. The squadron commander and his deputy take the ones on whom they agree hands down will get the bombs to the target.. We had hundreds of miles to fly, some of them in an area full of missiles. While Aflaq cautioned the plotters because of the party's lack of support, they failed to share his worries, and planned to launch the coup on 7 March. Al-Hariri led a brigade from the Syrian front towards Israel, while Ba'athists were able to gain control of a second brigade stationed in Suwayda. Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, gives you breaking news, analyses and opinions about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. By then, Mughniyeh was dead. In this matter, the Mossad concurred with the Military Intelligence assessment. [21] The Damascus faction was the enemy of the military committee because of their support for Nazim al-Kudsi's Government and the Hawranist were considered as rivals because of their stance against pan-Arabism. It is far from any settlement. In the course of the examination, the researchers identified the Cube. The majority of Syrians continued to see themselves as Arabs rather than Syrians. One of the key figures who led to the decision to bomb the Syrian reactor, the head of the Mossad at the time, Meir Dagan, died in March last year. Syria When the material taken from the computer was received in Israel, it was found to include about 35 photographs from inside the mysterious building in the Syrian desert.