Al Qaeda a lesser evil ? Syria War Pulls U.S., Israel Apart

Un petit évènement : le Wall Street Journal fait un article sur le soutien donné par Israël aux combattants d’al-Nusra (al-Qaïda en Syrie) sur le Golan syrien. A faire lire à tous ceux qui prétendaient il y a quelques temps encore que les dirigeants de l’Etat hébreu préféraient un diable connu (Assad) à un diable inconnu (les « rebelles syriens ») :
Al Qaeda a Lesser Evil ? Syria War Pulls U.S., Israel Apart , Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, 12 mars 2015
►http://www.wsj.com/articles/al-qaeda-a-lesser-evil-syria-war-pulls-u-s-israel-apart-1426169708
A lire en entier, mais voici quelques morceaux choisis :

Le WSJ acte le traitement des combattants blessés d’al-Nusra en Israel :

To the south of this overlook, from which United Nations and Israeli officers observe the fighting, are the positions of the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda that the U.S. has targeted with airstrikes.
Nusra Front, however, hasn’t bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer—and some of its severely wounded fighters are regularly taken across the frontier fence to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.

Déclaration d’Amos Yadlin, ancien chef de l’Aman et pressenti comme futur ministre de la Défense donne ses préférences : plutôt al-Qaïda que l’alliance Damas-Téhéran-Hezbollah sur la frontière du Golan occupé :

“There is no doubt that Hezbollah and Iran are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy,” said Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence who is slated to become minister of defense should the center-left Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, unseat Mr. Netanyahu in Tuesday’s elections.

“Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy—maybe it isn’t Israel,” Mr. Yadlin added during an interview.

Des officiels israéliens minorent l’évidence tout en la reconnaissant, oui, oui on soutient bien al-Qaïda en Syrie pour des raisons tactiques :

“There is an understanding and there is a familiarity of the forces on the ground. I wouldn’t go the extent of calling it coordination. It is extremely tactical,” an Israeli military official said.

#Israel Working With #Al-Qaeda ?
▻http://www.lobelog.com/israel-working-with-al-qaeda

Oui, selon rien moins que le très néocon « #Weekly_Standard », qui ajoute que les « intérêts » israéliens divergent de ceux des Etats-Unis qui eux soutiennent les « extrémistes chiites » (le Hezbollah)

... another article appearing in the same Weekly Standard edition—“Friend and Foe in Syria: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Enemy’s Enemy”—by hard-line neoconservative Lee Smith quite remarkably did [address the tie between Israel and al-Qaeda/Nusra]. The article is a compelling one: not only because it concludes that Israel is indeed colluding with al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, but also because it makes abundantly clear that, in Smith’s words, the United States and Israel have reached “strategic divergence” across the Middle East. Stated another way, U.S. and Israeli interests in Syria and elsewhere are no longer the same (if they ever were).

Smith begins his article with Israel’s outgoing chief of staff, Benny Gantz telling a U.S. audience “that it’s important that the international community defeat both camps of regional extremists.” In the general’s view, Smith went on,

[O]n one side there are Sunni radicals, like the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate. On the Shiite side are Iran and the Revolutionary Guards expeditionary unit, the Quds Force, as well as Hezbollah and Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias.

In saying this, according to Smith, Gantz was “tapping into a consensus position” that both sides are “equally bad.” But then Smith went on:

The reality, however, is that the government Gantz recently served has made clear distinctions between extremist groups in the Middle East, and has backed its preferences on the ground for certain actors in the Sunni camp. The Obama White House has also signalled its priorities, acquiescing to, if not actively supporting, the Iranian-backed Shiite axis.

(Personally, I find this latter assertion pretty questionable, since Obama has made pretty clear that his regional goal, as he told The New Yorker’s David Remnick a year ago, was to achieve “an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.” But let’s return to Smith.)

(...)

#Jim_Lobe