In interview with UK’s Sunday Times, outgoing army commander Gadi Eisenkot says Israel gave opposition groups light arms ‘for self-defense’

By Judah Ari Gross
14 January 2019

Syrian rebel fighters from the Quneitra province walk with their rifles as they wait at the Morek crossing point to be transfered in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo on July 21, 2018. (AFP Photo/Aaref Watad)

Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot this weekend acknowledged for the first time that Israel had indeed provided weaponry to Syrian rebel groups in the Golan Heights during the country’s seven-year civil war.

Until Sunday, Israel would say officially only that it had given humanitarian aid to Syrian opposition groups across the border, while denying or refusing to comment on reports that it had supplied them with arms as well.

In an interview in the British Sunday Times, before ending his tenure as chief of staff this week, Eisenkot said that Israel had indeed provided light weapons to the rebel groups along the border, saying it was “for self-defense.”

Israel’s supply of weapons to these opposition groups has been reported for years — both by the Syrian army, looking to discredit the rebels as stooges of the Zionists, and by the opposition groups, interested in expanding their cooperation with Israel in the fight against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad — but was never confirmed by Israeli officials.

Eisenkot’s acknowledgment in the Sunday Times appeared to be part of a larger movement within the Israeli military and defense establishment to be more open about the IDF’s activities against Iran in Syria.

As the outgoing army chief conducts departing interviews with Israeli and international outlets, more and more previously classified information about the IDF’s fight against Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria has emerged.

In his media appearances, Eisenkot acknowledged that the IDF carried out hundreds of raids in Syria — in some interviews, the number given is 200, in others its 400 — and dropped 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets in 2018 alone.

“We carried out thousands of attacks [in recent years] without taking responsibility and without asking for credit,” the army chief told the Sunday Times.

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