Ezekiel 38-39 in view:
The Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba movement has formed a brigade to liberate the Golan Heights from Israel.
The Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba movement, Iraq's Shiite militia organization, has formed a brigade to liberate the Golan Heights from Israel, spokesman for the movement, Seyed Hashem Moussavi said on Wednesday.
"After recent victories (in Syria), we have established the Golan Liberation Brigade," al-Moussavi said at a press conference, as quoted by the Tasnim News Agency.
He added that "if the Syrian government requests, we are ready to take actions to liberate Golan."
According to the spokesman, the Golan Liberation Brigade is made up of highly-equipped and well trained special forces.
The movement is a paramilitary group, part of the Popular Mobilization Units, an Iraqi state-sponsored organization composed of some 40 militias, formed in opposition to the Islamic State (Daesh) terrorist group.
Israel occupied the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War with Syria and annexed the territory in 1981. The international community has not recognized the Israeli annexation.
Israel’s Ambassador to Jordan Einat Schlein recently warned that the Hashemite kingdom faces growing instability amid economic woes and an influx of Syrian refugees, according to a report in the Haaretz newspaper.
Schlein reportedly gave a pessimistic assessment on the firmness of the regime in a meeting with IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot in October.
Eisenkot was said to have been troubled by the assessment. An unnamed top Israeli official told the paper the chief of staff has since said the Jewish state should assist its neighbor. It was not clear what manner of assistance he was referring to.
Jordan said it was surprised by Schlein’s comments. Official sources, while acknowledging “difficulties” over refugees and the econonmy, told Haaretz that the stability of the government was not currently a matter of concern.
Though rarely acknowledged, Israel and Jordan are said to share close military ties. Jordanian and Israeli fighter pilots have reportedly trained together. Last year reports said King Abdullah II told American lawmakers the country’s forces had together confronted Russian warplanes over southern Syria.
Analysts have warned that Jordan’s economic troubles leave it susceptible to public unrest as well as rising popularity of extremist ideologies.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Wednesday asked US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to reconsider American support for the United Nations agency that deals with Palestinian refugees, as well as for the UN Human Rights Council.
During a meeting at the State Department, Liberman urged Tillerson to consider quitting the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council and to stop funding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA.
The agencies do not fulfill their mission, he told the secretary, according to readout of the meeting issued by Liberman’s office. “Instead, the Human Rights Council deals with demonizing Israel and with efforts to harm it by distorting reality.”
He said it was unacceptable that 60 percent of the council’s resolutions targeted Israel instead of dealing with the dire human rights situation in Iran or North Korea or Syria.
Last week, the US envoy to the Human Rights Council, Erin Barclay, criticized the council for its outsize focus on Israel.
“Regrettably, too many of the actions of this council do not support these universal principles. Indeed, they contradict them,” she said.
“No other nation is the focus of an entire agenda item… The obsession with Israel… is the largest threat to this council’s credibility,” added Barclay, a career diplomat. “It limits the good we can accomplish by making a mockery of this council. The United States will oppose any effort to delegitimize or isolate Israel.”
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