Israeli minister backs Syria's sectarian partition

An Israeli minister has cast doubt on the longevity of a lasting ceasefire in Syria, suggesting instead that the country should be partitioned along sectarian divides.

Israeli defence minister says "sectarian partition" is best option for war-torn Syria

Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference on Sunday, Moshe Yaalon, Israeli defence minister, said he is "very pessimistic" about the possibility of a lasting truce. "Unfortunately we are going to face chronic instability for a very, very long period of time," a Reuters news agency report quoted Yaalon as saying.

"And part of any grand strategy is to avoid the past, saying we are going to unify Syria. We know how to make an omelette from an egg. I don't know how to make an egg from an omelette."


Yaalon also predicted that Syria will turn into "enclaves" under the de-facto control of religious and ethnic sects, including President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect, the Druze religious minority and the Kurdish ethnic group.

"They might cooperate or fight each other."  The Syrian fighting started as an unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011. It has since escalated into a full-on armed conflict between government forces and rebel groups, killing more than 260,000 people, according to estimates by the UN.

Syrian conflict

Yaalon's comments on Syria come a month after he said that Israel preferred the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group over Iranian-backed armed groups in southern Syria, near the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

At a conference in Tel Aviv in January, he said that Israel views Iran as a larger threat than armed groups in Syria, The Times of Israel reported.