Israel Fires into Syria as the Capital Damascus - in Syria's South - Comes into Play

Syrian rebels take towns near ceasefire line with Israel

March 21, 2013

Reuters - Syrian rebels have overrun several towns near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in the past 24 hours, rebels and a monitoring group said on Thursday, fuelling tensions in the sensitive military zone.

"We have been attacking government positions as the army has been shelling civilians, and plan to take more towns," said Abu Essam Taseel, from the media office of the "Martyrs of Yarmouk", a rebel brigade operating in the area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group monitoring the conflict in Syria, said rebels had taken several towns near the Golan plateau, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed.

It said that on Wednesday night rebels had captured Khan Arnabeh, which sits on the Israeli-Syrian disengagement line and straddles a main road leading into Israeli-held territory.

Rebels also took Mashati al-Khadar and Seritan Lahawan, two villages near the ceasefire line, it said.
U.N. peacekeepers monitoring the line halted patrols this month after rebels held 21 Filipino observers for three days.

The armed struggle between rebels and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has posed increasing difficulties for the 1,000-strong U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF).

There is growing concern in Israel that Islamist rebels may be emboldened to end the quiet maintained by Assad and his father before him on the Golan front since 1974.

Rebel sources say the Syrian army intensified shelling of villages in the area of Saham al-Golan at dawn on Thursday.

They said that rebels in the Quneitra region, next to the Golan, were stepping up attacks on roadblocks to gain more territory but added that the strategic town of Quneitra - which was largely destroyed and abandoned during Israeli-Syrian clashes in 1974 - was still in Syrian government hands.

Israel fires into Syria after Golan attack on troops

March 24, 2013

Reuters - Israel said it fired into Syria on Sunday and destroyed a machine-gun position in the Golan Heights from where shots had been fired at Israeli soldiers in a further spillover of the Syrian civil war along a tense front.

It was not immediately clear whether Israel held Syrian troops or rebels responsible for what a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said had been a deliberate attack on Israeli patrols in the occupied territory.

Israeli forces "destroyed a Syrian machine gun nest that fired twice in the last 24 hours on Israeli patrols operating to safeguard the border," the spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said on his Twitter page.

Shells have fallen several times inside Israeli-controlled territory during Syria's civil war. Some of the incidents have drawn Israeli return fire.

Syria's southern provinces bordering Jordan and Israel have become an increasingly significant battleground as the capital Damascus - in Syria's south - comes into play and President Bashar al-Assad's forces fight hard to prevent rebel advances.

The Israeli military said one of its vehicles was hit late on Saturday by shooting from across the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line on the Golan Heights, but no one was hurt.

Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, said, "Our understanding is that it wasn't stray fire."

After a second incident on Sunday, Israeli soldiers "responded with accurate fire toward the Syrian post from which they were fired on", the military said.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement that Israel viewed shooting from Syria "with severity" and would not allow "the Syrian army or any other element to violate Israeli sovereignty by firing at our territory".

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the strategic plateau in 1981 in a move that has not won international recognition.

"Any ... fire from the Syrian side will be answered immediately by silencing the sources of fire when we identify them," Yaalon said.

Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli Defence Ministry official, said battles between Syrian government forces and Syrian rebels sometimes take place just a short distance from Israeli lines.

"At times, shells or bullets are fired at Israel. Usually the shooting (from Syria) is not deliberate, but it doesn't matter," he told Army Radio.

"Israel should not be the target of any attack, whether intentional or unintentional - because after all, if you accept something that was unintentional, that could lead to something intentional in the end," Gilad said.

Israel has said for months that it expects Assad's government to fall and has voiced concern that its chemical weapons could fall into the hands of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and al Qaeda.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has called for Assad to step down.

Washington's road to Iran goes through Syria (Op-Ed)

Syria is but a chess piece being used as a platform by larger powers. In a speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2007 retired US Military General Wesley Clark speaks of a policy coup initiated by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Clark cites a confidential document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2001 stipulating the entire restructuring of the Middle East and North Africa. Portentously, the document allegedly revealed campaigns to systematically destabilize the governments of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.Under the familiar scenario of an authoritarian regime systematically suppressing peaceful dissent and purging large swaths of its population, the mechanisms of geopolitical stratagem have freely taken course. [Source]

July 2, 2012

RT.com OpEd - The results of the Geneva talks on Syria depend on whom you ask.

­­US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that the principle of “mutual consent” on which a “transitional government” in Syria would be based, means President Assad has to go. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the contrary, insists the formation of a “transitional government” will be made on inclusive basis.

Before discussing what it means, let’s stop for a second to grasp the sheer fact: five foreign powers gathered to decide the fate of a country, in the absence of its leader and its people, who never asked them to do anything of the kind, let alone gave any mandate. This is an outrageous breach of international law. And what is even more outrageous is that nobody is concerned or even talking about it.

Now, the wording of the final communiqué, at Russian insistence, does not explicitly call for Assad's ousting but instead says the new government "shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent." Russia and China understand this formula to mean, according to the countries’ officials, that President Assad is part of the process.

But listen how the author of the new plan, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan interprets it:  

"The government will have to re-form by discussion, negotiation and by mutual consent, and I will doubt that the Syrians who have fought so hard for their independence, … will select people with blood on their hands to lead them." French Foreign Minister Fabius, in a surprising continuation of Sarkozy’s allegiance to Washington, spells it out even clearer: "Even if they [Russia and China] say the opposite, the fact is that text … means it won't be Bashar al-Assad. The opposition will never agree to him, so it signals implicitly that Assad must go and that he is finished," Fabius told television station TF1.

It sounds as though Washington found the final solution for Bashar Al-Assad. “Transitional government” based on “mutual consent” will be to Syria what the “no-fly zone” was to Libya. While a normal person understood the term “no-fly zone” as an area over which aircraft are not permitted to fly, Washington defined the term to mean more than 30,000 sorties of NATO fighter-bombers and reconnaissance flights.

In Syria’s case, by the Geneva agreement Washington has launched the final phase of President Assad’s removal. And again as with Libya, “regime” change will be carried out with the full agreement of UN Security Council’s permanent members!

The most appalling element here is that Russia seems to have fallen again into the Washington’s trap. Notwithstanding all the right declarations and efforts, at the end of the day Russia nevertheless signed a tacit agreement to abandon Syria, similar to the abstention vote on “no-fly zone” for Libya that allowed Washington to launch strikes.

A few words need to be said about Kofi Annan’s role in the process, which uncovered one more tactical approach in the “regime” change business of America. Compared to the “bad cop” behavior of the US administration, the silken-voiced elegantly-attired originally Kenyan diplomat served as a perfect peace-loving “good cop” figure.

In February 2012, just as the Syrian government was about to neutralize the armed insurrection within its country by terrorists illegally armed and trained by America and its allies, Annan comes up with a “6-point peace plan” that required government troops to “immediately” return to their barracks while the terrorists had to only “commit to stop the fighting.” In fact, Annan’s plan gave time to arm and train insurgents, to build up their terrorist capabilities, while gearing up western public support to war.

In preparation for Geneva talks, Kofi Annan pulls out one more “peace plan” that promotes the next stage of subverting President Al-Assad: a “government of national unity” must be created, which “could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups” with the exception of “those whose continued presence and participation would undermine the credibility of the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation”. Thus, in the Annan/US vision, the murderers who perpetrated the Houla massacre are entitled to be part of the government, but the only democratically elected leader of the country is not.

As if that were not enough, Annan’s “peace plan” № 2 requires prompt “free and fair multiparty elections” – which as “color revolution” methodology proved is the most practical environment to overthrow a government and solidify “opposition’s” gains.

US immediate goal in destabilizing Syria is to move forward the front against Iran. In this direction, operations in Syria are proceeding in tandem with gearing-up of Azerbaijan on Iran’s northern border.

For Russia, once again falling into Washington’s trap will have dire consequences. On the international arena, Moscow loses precious credibility with its strategic allies, with Iran in particular. Geopolitically, Syria’s fall will speed up American’s relentless push across the Middle East into the Caucasus and Central Asia, consolidating its infrastructure on Russia’s southern military front and putting a definitive end to the prospects of the Eurasian Union.

These losses will hardly, if ever, be recoverable.

­Veronika Krasheninnikova, Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Research and Initiatives in Moscow, for RT 

­The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.