Ynet News.com ^[1]
February 3, 2013

Israel ^[2]‘s defense minister made his country’s first public comments Sunday on an airstrike ^[3] in Syria ^[4], suggesting that Israel had been behind the attack.

US officials have said the attack hit a convoy of anti-aircraft weapons inside Syria bound for the militant Lebanese Hezbollah ^[5]group, but Israel hasn’t publicly acknowledged the airstrike.

In the days ahead of the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ^[6] and other top officials repeatedly warned of the dangers of Syrian weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah and other hostile elements in the region.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak ^[7] brought the issue up at a gathering of the world’s top diplomats and defense officials in Germany, initially saying: “I cannot add anything to what you have read in the newspapers about what happened in Syria several days ago.”

But, addressing the audience in English, he then added: “I keep telling frankly that we said – and that’s proof when we said something we mean it – we say that we don’t think it should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon ^[8].”

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Israeli leaders have repeatedly expressed fears that if Syria were to disintegrate, President Bashar Assad ^[9] could lose control of his chemical weapons and other arms.

On Saturday night, Netanyahu, who is in the process of forming a new ruling coalition ^[10], said his new government would have to deal with weapons “being stockpiled near us and threatening our cities and civilians” – an apparent reference to the deteriorating situation in Syria.

Full story here. ^[1]