Did Benjamin Netanyahu Suggest Cutting Deal With Russia on Syria?
Image by getty images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged John Kerry to talk to Russia about a deal to destroy Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons.
The Wall Street Journal, citing American and Middle Eastern officials briefed on the exchange, reported Monday that Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about the issue on Sept. 11.
During the conversation, according to the newspaper, Netanyahu said he believed Russia wasn’t bluffing and that a deal was possible. Israel also shared U.S. concerns that military strikes on Syria in retaliation for its alleged use of chemical weapons against its own citizens would strengthen the Syrian rebels, who are linked to Al-Qaida, and would allow them to take possession of Syria’s chemical weapons.
The U.S. and Russia agreed on a deal over the weekend. Under the deal, Syria would provide a full account of its chemical weapons stockpile within a week, and the arsenal would be destroyed”in the soonest and safest manner,” according to the State Department. The agreement followed three days of talks in Geneva.
Kerry and Netanyahu met Sunday in Jerusalem to discuss the deal. Kerry said following the meeting that the agreement “will only be as efficient as its implementation will be” and that “President Obama has made it clear that to accomplish that, the threat of force remains.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
