Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the country is doing “what is necessary” to prevent Syria from funneling advanced military equipment and weapons of mass destruction to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.

Speaking at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Lieberman said, that Israel “has no interest in intervening in the civil war in Syria,” but its primary concern is to “first and foremost maintain public security and defend our sovereignty.”

“Our policies and positions are very clear, and they are based on three red lines: We will not allow any harm to come to the Israeli public, we will not allow anyone to undermine Israel’s sovereignty and we will not allow the smuggling of sophisticated weapons or chemical weapons from Syria to Lebanon and to Hezbollah,” Lieberman said.

Thursday’s statement echoed remarks Lieberman made in a meeting Wednesday with European Union ambassadors in Jerusalem.

Lieberman’s comments have been widely construed as responding indirectly to Arab media reports on Wednesday suggesting that Israeli fighter jets struck the Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus. Several Arabic-language outlets, including Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya, reported of a series of large explosions at the airport, which caused a raging fire.

The Syrian government denied an attack had taken place, saying only that a fire had broken out at the airport over a “technical malfunction,” whose nature was not specified.