A senior Israeli official said Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be removed from power in order to prevent further atrocities in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Gallant, a retired major general who led the Israel Defense Forces’s southern command, argued that the time has come to “eliminate” Assad and eventually deal with his sponsors in Iran, Bloomberg reported.
“The reality of the situation today in Syria, in which they are executing people, using chemical attacks against them, and the latest extreme measure — burning their corpses, something which we haven’t seen in 70 years in this world — we’re crossing a red line,” he said during a military conference in Israel. “In my opinion, it’s time to eliminate Assad.”
Gallant didn’t specify who should carry out the killing, but he suggested that once Assad — “the snake’s tail” — is gone, “we’ll be able to get to its head, which sits in Tehran.”
Gallant’s remarks followed U.S. Department of State’s allegations that the Assad regime built a crematorium at a prison outside Damascus to hide evidence of mass murders. Acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones, citing declassified intelligence reports, said the Syrian regime could be secretly killing as many as 50 detainees a day at Saydnaya prison. (RELATED: US Says Syria Is Hanging Hundreds Of Detainees And Cremating Them To Hide Evidence)
“Although the regime’s many atrocities are well-documented, we believe the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass atrocities taking place in Saydnaya prison” Jones told reporters on Monday. “We are appalled by the atrocities taking place in Syria” with the “seemingly unconditional support of Russia.”
The Syrian government called U.S. claims about the crematorium “totally untrue” and “fabrications by the imagination of this administration and its agents.”
Gallant’s comments illustrate growing unease among Israeli officials with Assad’s continued hold on power in Syria. As President Donald Trump prepares to visit the region next week, both Israel and U.S. Arab allies in the Persian Gulf have stepped up pressure on the administration to confront the Syrian president and his sponsors in Iran. (RELATED: Israeli Leaders Pressure Trump To Move US Embassy To Jerusalem)
Israel has thus far avoided a large-scale intervention in Syria, targeting instead weapons passing through the country and destined for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, reports Bloomberg.
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