Israeli forces continued their offensive inside Syria, which began following the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime last Sunday. Israeli troops breached the demilitarized buffer zone established in 1974 between Syrian-held and Israeli-occupied Syrian territory in the Golan, and occupied new positions in the Golan heights and on Mount Al-Sheikh.
Israel’s new advances according to reports included the occupation of nine Syrian towns in the Golan, where Israeli forces forced inhabitants to leave their homes and move deeper into Syria. Israeli tanks continued to advance, reaching up to 18 kilometers inside Syria, approaching the Damascus-Beirut international highway, at no more than 23 kilometers from the Syrian capital.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes conducted at least 300 airstrikes on Syrian military positions, including air defenses, radars, missile positions and arms warehouses according to the Israeli army. Israel also bombed the Syrian public scientific research center in the outskirts of Damascus.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that “Israel’s intention is clear in preventing any danger coming from Syria,” adding that “if the new regime in Syria allows Iran to return [to Syria, in reference to Iranian military advisors who had been present in Syria since 2012], then we will confront it.”
The UN spokesperson Stephan Dujarric said that Israel’s actions are a breach of the forces disengagement agreement signed between Syria and Israel in 1974, following the 1973 war. Dujarric said that the UN peacekeeping forces are present in three locations in the Golan, and that they will remain there.
On Monday, the U.S. State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller said in a press briefing that Israel’s invasion of Syrian territory was legitimate, because according to him, it aimed at preventing rebel groups from filling the vacuum created by the collapse of the Syrian army. Miller also said that the U.S. will “monitor” Israel’s actions, and make sure that they remain temporary.
Israeli leaders, however, indicated opposite intentions. On Sunday, Netanyahu released a video statement from the occupied Golan Heights, where he celebrated the collapse of Assad’s regime saying that it was a key piece of “the Iranian alliance,” adding that the occupied Syrian Golan will remain part of Israel “for eternity.”
Israel occupied the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, along with the West Bank, Gaza, and the Egyptian Sinai desert. Israel’s position was at the beginning that the occupation of these territories was temporary. The occupations of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza continue until today, 57 years later. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the Golan Heights and the eastern part of Jerusalem, also occupied in 1967.
Israel’s moves in Syria come amid statements from Israeli officials indicating Israel’s plans to announce the annexation of the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israel continues to forcibly drive Palestinians from the north of Gaza, amid calls by Israeli ministers and Knesset members to settle and annex the Gaza Strip as well.
By temperament I tend to avoid the ‘it-was-all-planned-out-years-ago’ point of view of events, but I’m finding it harder and harder to maintain this stance – here Jeffrey Sachs ** makes the case that there’s been a grand plan orchestrated by the U.S. and Israel to remake the Middle East. You decide:
How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace…American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s far-right Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal….The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011….The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is clear. Israel’s war on Syria began with U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives in 1996, who fashioned a “Clean Break” strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he came to office. The core of the “clean break” strategy called for the Israel (and the US) to reject “land for peace,” the idea that Israel would withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace. Instead, Israel would retain the occupied Palestinian lands, rule over the Palestinian people in an Apartheid state, step-by-step ethnically cleanse the state, and enforce so-called “peace for peace” by overthrowing neighboring governments that resisted Israel’s land claims….
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-israel-syria
**
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs
Does Israel plan to annex Syria and Lebanon? (Temporary occupation? oh, sure.) Or just destroy them?
Israel, under international law, can impose military administration in the new areas but not vacate the towns.
The Syria Authority should handle civilian affairs in the new areas under Israeli Military Administration.
The people have the right for local government election, town council election and village committee election.
Local governments can dictate the form of regional elections and who rules in Damascus.
Israel and Syria have the right, under international law, of defensible borders, the right of self-defence, and the right of conquest if faced with unprovoked war.
The Palestine issue exists because Arabic speaking nations from the east bank of the Nile to the Middle East fear the Greater Israel project devised by zionists. Greater Israel was about redrawing the map of Egypt and the Middle East. Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia would all lose part of their territories under the Greater Israel project. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank would no longer exist.
The people of Israel just want to live in peace with the neighbours. They don’t want Greater Israel or similar hare-brained schemes.
New Delhi, taking the cue from Pakistan created by the British in 1947 on land stolen from India, has cautioned Tel Aviv that the two state solution will create permanent mechanism for conflict in the Biblical Holy Land and the Middle East.
There won’t be Israel today if not for the Arabic speaking Jew from north Africa and the Middle East. They made the desert bloom.
The Constitution, Parliament and the court of law — colour blind institutions — cannot get into anything but the rule of law, the basis of the Constitution.
The rule of law isn’t legal term but political.
The Constitution isn’t law but has force of law based on the ultimate political document/s which set forth the governing institutions of state.
The ultimate political document/s was based on the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Trans Jordan Palestine Mandate, the transfer of the British Palestine Mandate to the UNSC and the Resolution by the UNSC 1948 on the creation of Israel as state with Jewish Character and the rump state of Palestine in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Israel declared Jerusalem as its eternal capital viz. no sharing Jerusalem with the rump state of Palestine. Judaism and Christianity came from Jerusalem which was founded by King David 3K years ago. Jerusalem has always had Jewish majority even after the Roman Empire exiled many Jews in the Diaspora (Greek for scattering)
Palestine was created and codified by the Roman Empire as unified administrative term for Israel and Judea, in the Biblical Holy Land, more than 2K years ago.
At that time, there were no Arabic speakers and Islam in Palestine.
The Ottoman Empire and the British Empire did not recognise the land claims of the Muslim in Palestine on the grounds that Islam came from outside.
The people of Palestine were known asPalestinian until 1948.