After Alleged Syria Strike, Bennett Says Israel Fighting 'Bad Forces'

After alleged Syria strike, Bennett says Israel fighting ‘bad forces’ night and day

Lazar Berman

Hours after Syrian media accused Israel of striking the port city of Latakia, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday that the military was constantly fighting “bad forces” in the Middle East.

“We’re pushing back on the bad forces of this region day and night,” he said in English alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades. “We won’t stop for one second. This happens almost daily.”

“In the face of destructive forces we will continue to act, we will be persistent, and we will not tire,” Bennett pledged.

Turning to the trilateral relationship, Bennett said that the regional EastMed Gas Forum — which includes Israel, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus and the Palestinian Authority — was progressing.

“We are expanding our ties in the fields of security, the economy, technology, tourism, and emergency services,” he said, referencing mutual aid provided over the summer in the face of forest fires in all three countries.

While Bennett did not mention Turkey, a regional rival of all three countries, Anastasiades laid into Ankara in his address, calling it a country that is “actively sabotaging any effort for regional understanding.”

He accused Turkey of “practicing a revisionist policy in which might is right,” and of violating Cyprus’s exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean.

In his statement, Mitsotakis also assailed Turkey for the “unacceptable provocations when it comes to… this Turkish change of approach vis-a-vis the resolution of the Cyprus problem.”

“The only viable solution to the Cyprus problem is one that fully respects all the decisions taken by the Security Council, ” he said, saying that third parties such as Turkey had no right to intervene in Cypriot affairs.

“Unfortunately, what we see from Turkey is a continued intransigence and unacceptable aggression, both on land and in the maritime zones of Cyprus,” he continued.