Do Israeli Airstrikes Play Into Assad's Hands?

“Israel’s alleged airstrikes in the Damascus region play nicely into the hands of Assad and the Syrian regime,” says professor Kais Firro from Haifa University. “In fact, they’re celebrating. It’s exactly what they needed.”

With Damascus reeling from a series of attacks, which Western sources claimed were conducted by the Israeli Air Force, I decided to approach Firro, an internationally acclaimed expert on Syria, Lebanon and minorities in the Middle East. He spent much of our interview flipping between one Arab news station to the next, trying to be as up-to-date as possible with every tidbit of information as it was released. In that time, he also managed to sketch out a complex outline of what is really going on in the great battle over Syria’s future.

“I can already see the impact that the bombing had,” he said, and he was not referring to the mushroom clouds of fire and smoke that rose over Damascus during the past few nights. “Now, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his men can state openly who the real force is behind the uprising. As far as Syrian pundits are concerned, it used to be 'the Agent' ('al-Waqil'), who took up arms against the Assad regime. Now it’s 'the Source' ('al-Asil'), who fights against the regime surreptitiously through 'the Agent.' With these attacks, claim Syrian commentators, Israel revealed that it is actually pulling all the strings. This certainly has an impact on the public opinion in the Arab world. I follow the public opinion in Syria very closely, and I can tell you that it is changing very quickly, without much push back. Until recently, people regarded the Syrian regime as the worst of all possible worlds. Now that’s beginning to change.”

Firro continues: “You can already see the beginnings of demonstrations in support of Syria. People identify with Syria now. They see it as a victim in some enormous plot to take down its government.”