The Battle for Southern Syria Has Been Joined and a Regional Conflict May Just Be the Main Event | Nicholas Noe

The Battle for Southern Syria Has Been Joined and a Regional Conflict May Just Be the Main Event | Nicholas Noe
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-noe/the-battle-for-southern-s_b_6668744.html

Perhaps not surprisingly, given its politically explosive nature, the opposing alliance has been much more difficult to understand and document. The main exhibit over the past few months has been a single, published UN report at the end of last year detailing increased Israeli-rebel contacts and coordination in and around the occupied Golan. Since Al-Qaeda’s franchise, al-Nusra, is known to mostly control the area where the Israeli contacts are reported to have taken place, and since some Israeli attacks in the area have materially benefited Nusrah’s advance against the Syrian army, it hasn’t exactly been a tough sell in the region, at least, to argue that Israel is likely engaged in an effort to coordinate and support some of the most bitter (and well-equipped) opponents of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria in the hope of, quite possibly, staking out a “security zone” in Southern Syria (beyond the Occupied Golan) that would more effectively buffer it from its main foes.