Minister Yoav Galant, a former IDF general, dismisses assassination of Syrian scientist as ‘another’ death, saying ‘he sounds like not a positive person’; questions Russians’ ability to keep Iran away from Israel-Syria border.
“There’s a war raging in Syria, a lot of sides are involved and there are a lot of interests. There have already been 600,000 deaths, apparently there’s another one,” said Galant, a former IDF major general and a member of the Security Cabinet.
He noted he had read “the description in the paper” of Dr. Aziz Asber, the scientist who was killed in a car bomb outside his home in Hama, adding, “he sounds like not a positive person to me.”
Galant also questioned the Russians’ ability to keep the Iranians away from the Syria-Israel border. “We know how (the Iranians) took over Lebanon using Hezbollah in the early 1980s—through processes of instructors, trainers, humanitarian aid and so on. The method is similar, and therefore we will not allow anything of the kind,” he said.
“But we have a great advantage here—we will demand the Syrians to take responsibility. There’s a Syrian army and separation agreements from 1974 that need to be kept. There will be no Iranian presence in Syria, and if there is—we’ll demand answers from the Syrian government as well,” Galant explained.
