Israel seeking to ease tensions with Syria

Israeli officials are making efforts to ease the tension with Syria that has come about following remarks made by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

A statement issued by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lieberman on Thursday said Tel Aviv wants to engage in dialogue with Syria without pre-conditions.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has also made attempts to defuse the tension. Barak pointed out that he was not happy about Lieberman’s remarks and that an arrangement with Syria is Tel Aviv’s strategic objective.

On Thursday, Lieberman threatened to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. “When there is another war, you will not just lose it, but you and your family will lose power,” Lieberman told a business conference at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

“There must be a correlation, because unfortunately, until now a military defeat did not mean a loss of power,” Lieberman went on to say.

The Israeli foreign minister made the remarks on Thursday one day after Assad’s meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos in Damascus where the Syrian leader warned that Israel was pushing the Middle East toward a new war.

Assad made the remarks days after the Israeli defense minister said Syria should clinch a peace deal with Israel or it would find itself in a “full-fledged war” with Tel Aviv.

The Syrian president also asserted that Israel is not being serious in seeking peace and that all signs implied that Tel Aviv is “working towards a war.”

The hawkish Israeli foreign minister reacted angrily to the comments, claiming that Assad “crossed a line” by directly threatening Israel and suggesting that any future offensive against the Lebanese resistance movement would draw a response from Syria.

Lieberman’s war rhetoric comes after his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem urged Israel to “return to reason, follow the path of peace … and implement the requirements of peace fairly and comprehensively,” warning that any future war would move into Israeli cities.