TEL AVIV, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel must prepare for the threat of a chemical attack from Syria as the army deployed its new Iron Dome anti-missile system near the border with its northern neighbor.
Meanwhile, the United Nations humanitarian chief was in Damascus on Sunday for talks with Syrian officials about the nation’s conflict, which has forced millions of people from their homes, destroyed the country’s cities, and created food and fuel shortages.
Netanyahu told members of the Cabinet during the weekly meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday that Israel faces dangers from throughout the Middle East. Top security officials held a special meeting last week to discuss what may happen to Syrian stocks of chemical weapons amid the civil unrest there, Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Army Radio.
“We must look around us, at what is happening in Iran and its proxies and at what is happening in other areas, with the deadly weapons in Syria, which is increasingly coming apart,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet, according to an e-mailed statement.
Syrian rebels, mostly Sunni Muslims, have been fighting to oust President Bashar Assad since March 2011 in a conflict that the United Nations says has left at least 60,000 people dead. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel has long expressed concerns that Assad could lose control over his chemical weapons. Israel has kept out of the civil war, but it is concerned that violence could spill over from its northern border into Israel.
Shalom said the transfer of weapons to violent groups, particularly the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, would be a game changer.
“It would be crossing a line that would demand a different approach, including even action,” he said. Asked whether this might mean a pre-emptive attack, he said: “We will have to make the decisions.”
The Iron Dome system, which was used to shoot down hundreds of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip during Israel’s November conflict with Hamas and other militant groups, is being deployed at an unspecified site in the north, according to an Israeli army spokesman. She spoke anonymously in accordance with military regulations and said setting up the anti-missile battery was part of routine operations.
Israeli forces must be particularly alert during the period after last week’s election in which Netanyahu is trying to form a new coalition government and enemies are looking for signs of weakness, the prime minister said. Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu alliance lost 11 parliamentary seats in the vote and the prime minister said he needs a broad and stable coalition to deal with security threats from the region.
Yisrael Hasson, a lawmaker and former deputy head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, said Israel was closely following developments in Syria to make sure chemical weapons don’t “fall into the wrong hands.”
U.N. Humanitarian Chief Valerie Amos did not make any public remarks upon her arrival in Damascus on Sunday for a two-day visit, but at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, she said world powers had not done enough to lessen Syrian suffering.
Living conditions have deteriorated across Syria. Entire towns and neighborhoods have been damaged in the fighting, and more than 2 million people are internally displaced, with another 650,000 seeking refuge in neighboring countries.
Some areas face food shortages, and even areas that have been spared large-scale violence such as Damascus lack sufficient quantities of gasoline, heating oil and cooking gas.
World powers remain divided on how to solve the crisis. The U.S. and many Arab and European countries have called on Assad to step down, while Russia, China and Iran refuse any pressure from outside that seeks to hasten the regime’s fall.
On Saturday, Iran made its strongest warning to date that it could intervene militarily to help Assad’s regime.
Iran is Syria’s strongest ally in the Middle East, and has provided Assad’s government with military and political backing for years.
Also on Sunday, Syria announced that it would drop legal proceedings against opposition figures who returned to the country to participate in a “national dialogue” called for by Assad during a recent speech.
Syria’s Higher Judicial Council announced the decision in a statement carried by the state news agency. The report gave no further details.
Assad proposed the national dialogue as part of his plan to end the country’s crisis as laid out in a high-profile speech this month at the Damascus Opera House.
In the same speech, however, he vowed to keep fighting and referred the opposition as criminals and terrorists - making it unlikely anyone will take their chances on the amnesty offer.
Tens of thousands of activists, their family members and opposition supporters remain jailed by the regime, according to international rights groups.
Opposition leaders have repeatedly rejected any talks that include Assad, insisting he must step down.
Violence continued around Syria on Sunday. The Britain based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported clashes and government airstrikes in neighborhoods east and south of Damascus as well as elsewhere. At least seven people died in attacks in the suburbs, and three others died after a shell landed in the city’s southern Yarmouk district.
The group, which relies on contacts throughout Syria, also reported clashes near a train station in southwestern Qadam neighborhood where four rebel fighters and one woman were killed.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Frezinger and Calev Ben-David of Bloomberg News; and by Ian Deitch, Albert Aji and Ben Hubbard of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/28/2013