Veteran dissident Haitham Manna, the France-based head of the so-called 'internal opposition', the Syrian National Coordination Body, has rejected any form of intervention in Syria and said Israeli strikes against the country have come at a time when Syria are more vulnerable than ever to external intervention.
Following claims by Israeli officials that the strikes on Friday and Sunday were aimed at weapons transfers from Iran to Lebanon's Hezbollah, and that Israel was not on any side in Syria's civil war, Manna said: “Israel was never neutral on what happens in Syria."
But, Manna said the nature of Israel's intervention "has a qualitative difference" considering "the scale of the Israeli intervention, its power, and [the fact] that it comes at a time when Syria is more open than ever to foreign military intervention."
"Now we see that it is non-Syrians who are the most willing to die on Syrian land. We do not want anyone's intervention…neither Zawahiri nor Hezbollah," Manna said, referring to the head of al-Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, to whom the jihadist al-Nusra front recently pledged allegiance.
He noted that "Israeli considerations related to intervention in Syria stem only from Israeli interests and its assessment of the balance of forces on the ground. It tries to exploit every loophole to weaken the Syrian armed forces within its strategy of maintaining its military supremacy in the region."
"Under international law, the attack represents a one-sided declaration of war," Manna said.
"But it comes at a time when any request from the Syrian regime will not get an ear from either the United Nations of the Human Rights Council."
Manna said the Syrian regime had forfeited its rights by losing legitimacy to rule.
"Syrian authorities have made us reach a stage in which the term legitimacy has lost its content and the idea of the state has lost its meaning…..these ideas are no longer valid," he said.
After a visit to Washington, Manna referred to his belief that "the American position has been consistently towards non-military interference in Syria, while also proceeding with arming the opposition and encouraging efforts to fund and arm the opposition using non-American sources."
Manna asked Washington to "compel its allied partners to accept a political solution in accordance with Geneva agreement, in which we see the only way to stop the violence and the possibility of beginning a path to democratic transition."
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