PM warns of Syria transferring WMDs to terrorists

Netanyahu tells EU ambassadors that Israel would weigh military action to prevent chemical weapons falling into terrorist hands.

By HERB KEINON
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Israel will weigh military action if it suspects Syria’s chemical weapons might fall into the hands of terrorist organizations, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
“We will do everything that is needed” to ensure Syria’s WMD stockpiles are not transferred, Netanyahu said at a meeting with EU ambassadors stationed in Israel.
Netanyahu told the European envoys that Hezbollah fighters were taking an active role in the slaughter taking place in Syria, and that Syrian President Bashar Assad would not have survived this long without Iran’s intervention.
The EU has been steadfast in its refusal to place Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations.
Turning to Egypt, the prime minister made clear that he was opposed to any efforts by the new Egyptian government to make changes in the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
Changes in the treaty, he said, were liable to endanger the whole peace agreement and harm the possibility of reaching other accords, since Jerusalem’s trust in Cairo’s adherence to treaties will have been eroded.
Netanyahu also said that Israel expected Egypt to prevent Sinai from being used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks, saying that it was also in the world’s interest that international terrorists not get a base in Sinai.
Moving from country to country, Netanyahu spoke briefly to the ambassadors about Turkey, saying he would welcome assistance “from every one of you” in rebuilding Israeli-Turkish ties, something “in the interest of both sides.”
As to the Palestinians, Netanyahu said the PA had “wasted” four years by refusing to negotiate with Israel until its conditions were met – something he said he was unwilling to do.
The PA’s plans to seek “nonmember observer state” status in the UN General Assembly will make it more difficult to find a solution and will just waste more time, Netanyahu said.
“Don’t lend your hands to this process,” he urged.
Netanyahu said the Palestinians needed to take economic steps to improve their financial situation, and stop “blaming us for everything happening there.”
He warned that a boycott of products from Judea and Samaria would only worsen the Palestinian economic situation and lead to the firing of some 25,000 Palestinians employed in West Bank factories.
In a related development, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor called upon the Security Council and responsible members of the international community to “stop the provocation” of a vessel that set sail from Sweden and is currently on its way to Gaza to challenge Israel’s naval blockade.
Prosor, in a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the president of the Security Council, said the ship was expected to arrive in the vicinity of Gaza with a week. He wrote that this “could affect the stability of our region” by raising tensions and sparking “a serious escalation of conflict.”
“Israel’s naval blockade is a necessary and legitimate security measure. Its only purpose is to stem the flood of arms into Gaza, where terrorists continue to fire rockets into Israeli communities day and night,” Prosor wrote. “There is no need for this flotilla. There is not a single civilian good that cannot enter Gaza.”
Prosor wrote that the “rap sheets” of the passengers make clear “they are driven by radical and extremist agendas.” For instance, he said, “Johan Galtung – the leader of this provocation –was recently suspended from the Swiss World Peace Academy for making a series of public anti-Semitic rants.”
Dubbing the group “weekend revolutionaries,” Prosor wrote that “instead of delivering much-needed goods to address the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the broken moral compass of these selfproclaimed human rights activists has steered them to Gaza. Even without access to today’s GPS systems, the medieval Vikings had a far better sense of direction.”