JERUSALEM — Syrian president Bashar al Assad has only “a few weeks” left in control of the strife-torn country, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak told lawmakers Monday.
“The Assad family has no more than a few weeks to remain in control in Syria,” Barak told the parliament’s prestigious foreign affairs and defense committee in remarks quoted by the committee spokesman.
“There is no possibility in the current situation of evaluating what will happen the day after Bashar’s fall,” he said.
Syria has been pressing a bloody and brutal crackdown against pro-democracy activists which the United Nations estimates has killed more than 5,000 people in 2011.
Barak also warned that the fall of the Assad family could have implications for the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
“In the north, there may be possible implications from Syria on the Golan Heights and a broader area as the result of the loss of control,” he said Monday in a separate statement released by his office.
Meanwhile, the Arab League chief Nabil al Arabi said Monday that snipers and gunfire remained in Syrian cities and called for an immediate halt to the shootings.
“There is gunfire. There must be a total halt to the gunfire,” the League chief said, in the face of mounting criticism of the hard-won observer mission’s failure to stem the persistent bloodshed.
Arabi charged that snipers were still deployed on rooftops in protest centers threatening the lives of civilians, even as monitors try to end the Syrian government’s deadly crackdown that has claimed thousands of lives since March.
But “it is difficult to say who is firing on whom,” Arabi told a news conference at Arab League headquarters in Cairo.