Former national security adviser: Forget Gaza, focus on Iran in Syria

Former national security adviser Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror seems to defend the Netanyahu government’s decision to pursue a ceasefire in Gaza, saying anything that distracts from the effort to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria must be “pushed off.”

“Israel has an immense defense challenge facing the Iranian war machine in Syria,” Amidror said in an interview with the 103FM radio station. “Israel must always ask itself if any defensive action it carries out hurts its freedom of operation in Syria. I think we must focus all our efforts in Syria and push off everything else until we succeed in dealing with the Iranian problem on the border.”

Amidror, who served as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser from 2011 to 2013, adds: “We may not succeed. I don’t know how long it will take, and it may bring a difficult war between us and Hezbollah, so we must delay everything else in order to focus on the main thing.”

He also says the ceasefire being pursued with Hamas marks very little change from the agreements in place since 2014.

“We’re not looking at a [long-term] settlement” with Hamas, but “a ceasefire like we had after Protective Edge [in 2014], with an expansion of the fishing zone. Beyond that there’s no change. If it works and grows, the sides may work toward a [more permanent] framework agreement. This isn’t a hudna [ceasefire in Arabic] but an agreement through Egypt and the UN on the opening of border crossings in exchange for quiet. We gave nothing and we received nothing beyond the 2014 agreement that ended Protective Edge.”