The Israeli military attacked a Syrian position on Friday after a mortar shell exploded in the buffer zone between the two countries, in what the military said was a violation of a 1974 ceasefire agreement.
“The IDF attacked a Syrian outpost from which a mortar shell was fired that landed in the buffer zone, east of and close to the fence,” the army said in a statement.
The military said the mortar shell was fired during the ongoing battles between Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s forces and opposition groups in the area. The army would not say if it believed the shelling from Syria was intentionally directed at the buffer zone or if it was a stray shot from nearby fighting.
The Israel Defense Forces said it would continue to hold Assad’s regime responsible for upholding the 1974 ceasefire agreement between the two countries, which ended the previous year’s Yom Kippur War.
Under the armistice, a demilitarized zone was established between Israel and Syria.
While Israel says this is not its primary goal, the area’s status as a demilitarized zone has made it a de facto safe haven for residents of southern Syria. As a result, tens of thousands of Syrians began fleeing toward this buffer zone to escape a renewed offensive by Assad’s forces, with help from Russia and Iran-backed Shiite militias.
“The IDF is tracking what is happening in Syria and is prepared for a variety of scenarios in order to protect the security situation along the border. The IDF will continue to provide humanitarian aid to residents of the area in Syrian territory, and will also prevent the entrance of refugees into the territory of the State of Israel,” the army said Wednesday.
As Syrian government forces press on with a furious offensive against rebel-held areas in the country’s south, Israel is quietly acknowledging that President Bashar Assad’s forces will soon be on its doorstep, laying down red lines for postwar relations with the Syrian leader.
Israel’s main concern is to keep archrival Iran, an Assad ally, as far away from its border as possible — along with its proxy, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
“Our demand is that the Iranian forces will go out or withdraw from Syria as a whole, and in it specifically southwest Syria,” said a senior Israeli military official.
It is a turnaround from a few years ago, when Israeli leaders were publicly predicting Assad’s overthrow and some voices even mused about peace with a future democratic Syria.
While carefully refusing to take sides in the Syrian civil war, Israel offered humanitarian assistance to rebels, and has made a public show of taking in several thousand wounded Syrians for medical treatment.
But there is a sense now in Israel, as in parts of the West, that despite Assad’s vicious conduct of the war — with hundreds of thousands killed and millions forced from their homes — his survival may be a better outcome than a takeover of Syria by Islamic militants who emerged over time as his most potent rivals.
Israeli leaders have sent a series of messages making clear that they expect Assad and his Iranian-backed allies to honor a decades-old agreement that sets out a demilitarized zone along the frontier and limits the number of forces each side can deploy within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the zone.
“We have a Separation of Forces Agreement with Syria from 1974,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared this week. “This is the guiding principle. We will adhere to it very strictly and so must others, everyone.”
No comments:
Post a Comment