Former Defense Minister MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) said on Monday that the regime in Syria has begun to transfer chemical weapons to the Hizbullah terror group, its proxy in Lebanon.
“The process of weapon transfer to Hizbullah has begun,” Ben-Eliezer told The Associated Press. He would not elaborate.
Earlier, MK Ben-Eliezer told Kol Yisrael radio that he “has no doubt” that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has already used chemical weapons against rebels and that that “these weapons are trickling to Hizbullah.”
He told AP he is “amazed by the silence of the world” and that the international community needs to intervene to end the civilian death toll in Syria’s civil war.
“I wouldn’t rule out preparing a plan for Israel to act if the world continues to remain silent and the weapons continue to flow to Hizbullah. These are crazy people, terrorists who will not hesitate to use this tomorrow morning,” he said.
Last week, the United States said for the first time that Syria had likely used chemical weapons against rebel forces, but emphasized spy agencies were still not 100 percent sure of the assessment.
In the past, U.S. President Barack Obama warned that use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would cross a red line.
On Friday, Obama repeated his past assertions that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a line and produce an American response, but indicated that he was not yet 100% certain that the findings by U.S. intelligence agencies are an indication that such weapons had indeed been used.
“Knowing that there’s chemical weapons in Syria doesn’t tell us when they were used or how they were used,” Obama said. “We ourselves will be putting a lot of resources on this.”
“To use weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line in terms of international norms and laws,” he said. “That’s going to be a game changer.”
“For the Syrian government to use chemical weapons on its people will change my calculus,” he added. “This is not an on and off switch. It’s an ongoing challenge that all of us have to work with.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday that growing evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime was “extremely serious”.
Cameron agreed with President Barack Obama that such use would represent a “red line” for the international community, but said the response would likely be political rather than military.