Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday Syria must be stripped of its chemical weapons and that the international community must make sure those who use weapons of mass destruction pay a price.
Speaking at a military ceremony, Netanyahu said Syria had carried out a “crime against humanity” by killing innocent civilians with chemical weapons and that Syria’s ally Iran, who is at odds with the West over its nuclear programme, was watching to see how the world acted.
“It must be ensured that the Syrian regime is stripped of its chemical weapons, and the world must make sure that whoever uses weapons of mass destruction pays a price for it,” Netanyahu said. “The message that is received in Syria will be received loudly in Iran.”
Taking the stage after Netanyahu, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon reiterated Israel’s position that in confronting regional threats, “at the end of the day, we have to trust in ourselves, in our strength and in our ability to deter”.
The remarks came after Syria accepted a Russian proposal that it give up its chemical stockpiles in the face of possible US military action. It denies carrying out the chemical attack.
Israel views the civil war in neighbouring Syria almost entirely through the prism of Iran, which it believes is trying to develop an atomic bomb. Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons and says its programme is for civilian purposes.
Netanyahu has called on world powers to strengthen sanctions on Iran and has repeatedly said Tehran would only curb its nuclear activities if it faced a credible military threat. Israel has the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal.
Meanwhile UN rights investigators established that Syrian government forces were almost certainly responsible for two massacres last May in which up to 450 civilians were killed, a report published yesterday said.
The report documents nine mass killings in all, attributing all but one to government forces, but said both government and rebel fighters had committed war crimes including murder, hostage-taking and shelling of civilians.
With more than 100,000 dead in the Syrian war, there was little sign that reports of atrocities would spur international action until last month, when allegations that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had gassed hundreds of civilians sparked a threat of US strikes, and furious international diplomacy.
The killings in Baida and Ras al-Nabaa, two pockets of rebel sympathisers surrounded by villages loyal to Assad on the outskirts of the town of Banias, did not involve fighting with rebels and appeared designed to send a message of deterrence.
The UN commission of inquiry has not been allowed into Syria, but its 20 investigators carried out 258 interviews with refugees, defectors and others, in the region and in Geneva, including via Skype, for their 11th report in two years.
In Baida, it said between 150 and 250 civilians had allegedly been killed, including 30 women, apparently executed, who were found in one house. It said armed rebels were not active in the area at the time.