naturalfeature:golan heights

Trump and Putin are the real targets of Israel’s alleged strike in Syria -

Exceptional strike, attributed to Israel, signals Netanyahu can disrupt a ceasefire in Syria if Israel’s security interests are ignored ■ Incident comes amid anti-Hezbollah war game

Amos Harel Sep 08, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.811078

The weapons manufacturing plant that occurred early Thursday morning in western Syria is a site clearly identified with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The exceptional attack, which foreign media are attributing to the Israel Air Force, appears to be a message to the world powers that maintain a prominent aerial presence in the area. Over the past two years, Russia has invested huge efforts in saving and rehabilitating the Syrian president.
The bombing is not routine, either in its target or its timing. In an interview with Haaretz last month, outgoing air force chief Amir Eshel said that over the past five years, the air force had launched attacks on the northern military theater and on other fronts.
But most of these forays were designed to quell efforts to strengthen Hezbollah and other terrorist and guerrilla groups. This time, according to Syrian reports, the target was a government one – a missile production facility run by the Assad regime – rather than another Hezbollah weapons convoy destined for Lebanon. 
>> Analysis: Israel Just Shot Itself in the Foot
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Over the past year, senior Israelis have highlighted their concerns following the wide steps taken by the Iranians to try and enlarge and upgrade the supply of precision missiles in Hezbollah’s possession. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot and Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi have all made reference to this in public appearances. 
For several years now, Hezbollah has maintained a huge weapons arsenal, containing between 100,000 and 130,000 missiles and rockets (according to various estimates). If the proportion of precision missiles is increased and their precision improved, that could enable the organization to inflict more devastating damage to the Israeli home front in a war.
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In accordance with its declared policy, Israel is acting to prevent Hezbollah improving the quality of its weapons. The chaos the Syrian civil war has caused, during which serious damage has been inflicted on the capabilities of Assad’s army, has seemingly made this easier for Israel. Syria has for years been a no-man’s-land that no one has controlled. That changed with the arrival of the Russians two years ago. 
According to foreign media, the deployment of Russian squadrons in northwest Syria since September 2015 hasn’t entirely halted the Israeli attacks. But the strategic reality has become more complicated. The prime Russian interest is the survival of the Assad regime. For Moscow, it is important to show that the regime is stable and that Russia is the party dictating what takes place in Syria. The attack on the facility – the Syrian Scientific Researchers Center – undermines that image, and could concern the Russians.
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The timing of the action attributed to Israel is sensitive. At the end of July, in a Russia-led effort, the Assad regime reached a partial cease-fire with Syrian rebel groups. Although the fighting has continued in various regions, its intensity has declined in many places. The United States, whose interest in Syria has been on the decline, acceded to the Russian initiative. 
Washington and Moscow also failed to heed Israeli protests that the agreement to reduce friction in southern Syria failed to require Iran and allied militias to steer clear of the Golan Heights.
Consequently, the attack attributed to Israel – the first to be reported since the agreement was reached – may be interpreted as an Israeli signal of sorts to the world powers: You still need to take our security interests into account; we’re capable of disrupting the process of a future settlement in Syria if you insist on leaving us out of the picture. 
Since the attacks attributed to Israel began in January 2012, the Assad regime has shown restraint in the vast majority of cases, other than in one incident in March this year when missiles were fired at Israeli planes after an attack near the town of Palmyra in eastern Syria. One missile was intercepted by an Arrow missile over Israel.
At first, the Syrian regime totally ignored most of the attacks. At later stages, it would accuse Israel and sometimes even threaten a response, but it didn’t follow through. The reason is clear: The damage sustained by the regime from the responses was marginal compared to the harm to civilians in the civil war, and the last thing President Bashar Assad wanted was to drag Israel into the war and tip the balance in the rebels’ favor.
Israel will have to see how recent developments are received in Moscow, Washington and Tehran. The response won’t necessarily come immediately.

Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting in Moscow, October 2015.AP
Russia is not hostile to Israel but, above all, it looks after itself and Assad. The Russians will also take the consequences on countries in other areas into account, as well as its tangled relations with the United States – which has been acting as a present-absent party in the Middle East for a long time now.
This comes against the backdrop, beginning Tuesday this week, of a large Israeli military exercise based on a war scenario with Hezbollah. In fact, Israel is taking pains to declare that the exercise was planned nearly a year in advance and that it has no warlike intentions. But the fact that the exercise was carried out has raised the anxiety threshold among Hezbollah’s leaders.
Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station, declared Wednesday that Hezbollah isn’t worried about a war. That’s very inaccurate. To a great extent, Hezbollah, like Israel, is worried about a war and would prefer to avoid one – but in the Middle East things sometimes happen when you don’t exactly intend them.
The early morning attack came exactly 10 years and a day after the bombing of the North Korean nuclear facility in eastern Syria, which U.S. President George W. Bush and others attributed to Israel. Last time (and then too, by the way, an attack came during a major exercise by the air force) a war was averted. That’s the hope this time too.

Panique : Netanyahou, l’Iran et le Hezbollah
▻http://www.dedefensa.org/article/panique-netanyahou-liran-et-le-hezbollah

Panique : Netanyahou, l’Iran et le Hezbollah

A la lumière de la confirmation avec les effets psychologiques et politiques à mesure de la victoire syrienne de Deir ez-Zour, le long commentaire ci-dessous d’Alastair Crooke sur la “panique Netanyahou” prend une singulière importance. Les Syriens d’Assad ont, avec l’aide des Iraniens et surtout du Hezbollah, et le soutien aérien massif de la Russie, emporté une victoire stratégique qui marque évidemment un tournant dans le conflit syrien, et sans doute un tournant décisif. Le concours du Hezbollah dans cette bataille, comme dans la majeure partie du conflit, constitue un élément majeur de ce conflit, et l’une des préoccupations fondamentales de Netanyahou.

Crooke analyse dans toute son ampleur la très difficile situation du Premier ministre israélien qui (...)

Along the Break - Photographs and text by Roei Greenberg | LensCulture
▻https://www.lensculture.com/articles/roei-greenberg-along-the-break

https://d3f49glnpfzr7k.cloudfront.net/large/9ffece51-1b78-4aaa-ab75-3f5b40edce77.jpg

Along the Break
Searching for the intersection of geography and history, a photographer from Tel Aviv traversed the vast landscape of Israel in a poetic exploration of boundaries.

Photographs and text by Roei Greenberg

The “Syrian-African Break” is the popular name for the Israeli part of the Great Rift Valley which crosses Israel from its northernmost point to its southernmost tip.

En route, it carves its way through the Golan Heights, Hula Valley, Sea of Galilee, Jordan Valley, Dead Sea, Arava Valley and Red Sea. This geographic phenomenon also plays a key role in the way physical borders have been drawn. The break shapes the borders with Lebanon and Syria in the north and the border with Jordan and Egypt in the south.

#photographie #géographie #histoire #frontière #Liban #Syrie #Palestine #Israël

Next Israel-Hezbollah confrontation could be in Syria
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/07/syria-south-ceasefire-israel-hezbollah-confrontation.html

Yet the Russian and Iranian agendas are on opposite sides of the spectrum. In March, an Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militia, the Al-Nujaba’a Brigade, announced it had formed a military force to “free the occupied Golan Heights.” In addition, Israeli officials have also criticized the deal, telling the Israeli Haaretz newspaper that the Americans and Russians had ignored Israel’s position almost completely. One official explained that the agreement was bad and “doesn’t take [into account] almost any of Israel’s security interests," and it creates a disturbing reality in southern Syria because it doesn’t include a “single explicit word about Iran, Hezbollah or the Shiite militias in Syria.”

Such a volatile context increases the chances of war in southern Syrian unless Russia is capable of reasoning with its two eternally at-odds allies, namely Iran and Israel. While many experts have been predicting a war between Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon, the danger of a conflict may loom farther to the east in southern Syria.

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/07/syria-south-ceasefire-israel-hezbollah-confrontation.html#ixzz4nXlXVsLM

Israel’s Relations with the Syrian Rebels: An Assessment :: Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
▻http://www.aymennjawad.org/20017/israel-relations-with-the-syrian-rebels

With this overview of the dynamics in these border areas, it remains to be asked what exactly are the Israeli goals and interests here. Much of the recent analysis has used the terminology of a “buffer zone” in relation to Israel’s border policies, meaning that the goal is to create an area of allied or “friendly” forces that will keep elements considered active threats to Israel away from the borders.[61] In this regard, the main threats are thought to be Iran and allied militias such as Lebanon’s Hizballah, the concern being that were the regime to regain full control over Quneitra governorate, Iran and its allies would have free access to this territory to build a Golan “resistance” front against Israel, which would at minimum entail the threat of small-scale attacks to harangue Israeli forces in the Golan and “test the waters,” so to speak, and at worst a full-scale invasion of Israeli territory.

It may in fact not be necessary for Iran to station its own personnel or members of foreign client forces in Quneitra in the future: It could well realize aspirations to build a “resistance” front in the area by “native proxy” through the multiple Syrian Hizballah groups that have arisen in the course of the civil war. Broadly speaking, Syrian Hizballah groups can be divided into two types: larger movements like Liwa al-Baqir, which claims 4,000 fighters[62] and has developed considerable networks within Aleppo province, and small-scale “special operation” groups that deploy to a number of different fronts depending on military needs and a sense of crisis. Some of these small Syrian Hizballah outfits have deployed to the Quneitra front,[63] though there is no evidence that they have done so to prepare for an imminent attack on Israel. In a future scenario of the development of a broader “resistance” along the Golan, these smaller groups may well be a key actor to threaten Israel.

A related source of concern has centered on the Druze village of Hadr, in that Samir al-Quntar–a Hizballah commander of Druze origin–and Farhan al-Sha’alan–an NDF commander originally from the Druze village of Ein Qiniyya in the Golan Heights–were trying to build a “resistance” movement in Hadr in order to target Israel.[64] Both men were killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in December 2015. No hints have emerged since of the revival of such a project.

Yet the case of Hadr actually shows that the “buffer zone” narrative, while seemingly convincing in its simplicity, does not fully account for Israel’s approach towards these border areas. On the general level, it is certainly true that in a choice between regime and rebel control over towns like Jubatha al-Khashab, the preference is that rebel forces should control them. With Hadr, however, Israel’s concern is that the village should not fall into rebel hands, despite concerns about Hizballah using it as a base for recruitment of personnel to target Israel. This position has arisen in deference to the sentiments of the Druze community in Israel and the Golan Heights, who understandably fear the fate of their co-religionists should the village ever fall to the rebels. Muru Hawran demonstrated an awareness of this lack of Israeli willingness to see Hadr fall, elaborating, “All that is happening is an international game at the expense of Syrian blood: settling of accounts.”[65] In a similar vein, he was clear that he still considered Israel to be an enemy state, but justified Fursan al-Jawlan’s acceptance of aid through Israel on the grounds that it is better to do so than to “destroy oneself.”[66]

UN sees spike in meetings between Israeli army, Syrian rebels, warns of escalation -

Israel says the meetings are held for humanitarian purposes, but the UN warns they could trigger clashes between rebels and the Syrian army

Barak Ravid Jun 19, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.796536

During the last seven months, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force has noted a significant escalation in contact and interactions between Israeli armed forces and rebel organizations along Israel’s border with Syria, chiefly in the area of Mt. Hermon, says a report released in recent days by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the members of the UN Security Council.
The report expressed Guterres’ concern, for the first time, that the interactions between the Israelis and the rebel organizations could lead to escalation, causing harm to UN observers.
Published on June 8, the United Nations report describes the activity of the UN observers from March 2 to May 16. Every few days during that time, they observed meetings and contacts between the Israel Defense Forces and the rebels in the area of the border, including by the Hermon. Altogether they listed at least 16 such meetings in that time.
The meetings took place in proximity to UN outposts in the Mt. Hermon area, in the area of Quneitra and in the central Golan Heights, near moshav Yonatan.
“Relative to the previous reporting period, there has been a significant increase in interaction between Israel Defense Forces soldiers and individuals from the Bravo side, occurring on four occasions in February, three in March, eight in April and on one occasion in May,” the report stated, referring to the Syrian side of the border.

Members of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) ride armored personnel carriers (APCs) in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights before crossing into Syria, August 31, 2014.Reuters
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That increase in the number of interactions between Israeli soldiers and representatives of the rebels continues a trend evident in the previous report, which had been published on March 17. That report covered the period between November 18, 2016, and March 1, 2017, and listed at least 17 interactions along the Golan border, including in the vicinity of the Hermon.

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According to both reports, UN observers saw 33 interactions between Israeli and rebel representatives over the last seven months.
In comparison, only two such meetings took place from August 30 to November 16 of last year according to UN reports, and they were only by the border, not by the Hermon.
One topic addressed in the latest report was meetings that took place in the area of the Hermon in the last three months. It stated that all such meetings happened in the vicinity of one of the IDF outposts there and all followed the same pattern: Unidentified people apparently affiliated with the rebel organizations, some of them armed, arrived at the IDF outpost accompanied by mules, and were greeted by the soldiers.
“In some instances, personnel and supplies were observed to have been transferred in both directions. On all occasions, the unknown individuals and mules returned to the Bravo side,” the report stated.
The UN secretary general clarified in the report that the nature of the interactions could not be observed.
“The Israel Defense Forces have stated that the interactions were of a humanitarian and medical nature,” the report said.
Israel contends that all the interactions with rebel representatives on the Syrian side were for humanitarian reasons, but in recent months the UN has started to view these interactions askance and began to warn they could lead to escalation. The report especially noted concern about the meetings around the Hermon, which the UN secretary-general defined as an area of strategic importance.
“Interaction between the Israel Defense Forces and unidentified individuals from the Bravo side, including in the area of Mount Hermon, has the potential to lead to clashes between armed elements and the Syrian Arab Armed Forces. I reiterate my call to both parties to the Disengagement of Forces Agreement regarding the requirement to maintain stability in the area. All military activities in the area of separation conducted by any actor pose a risk to the ceasefire and to the local civilian population, in addition to the United Nations personnel on the ground,” the secretary-general wrote in the report.
The UN secretary-general’s latest report on the activities of the UN observers on the Golan Heights, as well as the three preceding reports, criticized the Syrian army for bringing heavy weapons to the area of the border, violating the disengagement agreement. The UN also criticized Israel for the same thing.
According to the last four reports, in the last year the IDF has kept one or two batteries of the Iron Dome system in the Golan, and also holds heavy 155mm cannons and rocket launchers in the area, in violation of the disengagement agreement with Syria. UNDOF has protested the violations to both sides.
On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported Israel has been secretly providing aid to Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights for years, with the goal of maintaining a buffer zone of friendly forces to keep ISIS and forces aligned with Iran at bay.

Israel’s Quiet Campaign to Gain a Foothold in Southern Syria
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/syria/articles/2017/06/15/long-read-israels-quiet-campaign-to-gain-a-foothold-in-southern-syria

https://newsdeeply.imgix.net/20170615125223/image31.jpg?w=640&fit=max&q=60

“UNEITRA, SYRIA – Over the past five years, Israel has been quietly working to establish a foothold in southern Syria to prevent Syrian government-backed forces from controlling the area and to bolster its claim over the Golan Heights.

What began as tentative contacts with opposition factions and residents across the fence in 2012 has turned into a full-fledged, multifaceted operation that has military, logistical, political and humanitarian dimensions, according to an investigation by Syria Deeply, which interviewed residents, Syrian intelligence officials and opposition members for this story.

Israel’s “safe zone” now unofficially runs roughly 6 miles (10km) deep and 12 miles (20km) long beyond the demarcation line of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The effort is intended to prevent the Syrian government and its allies, specifically Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, from maintaining a foothold along the Israeli fence. Israel used a similar tactic to establish a zone of control in the south of Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war.”

50 Years of Israeli Occupation of Palestine
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/50-years-of-israeli-occupation-of-palestine

This week marks 50 years since the 1967 Six-Day War, which resulted in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights. 

Israeli Officers : You’re Doing ISIS Wrong - POLITICO Magazine
▻http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/22/israeli-officers-to-trump-youre-doing-isis-wrong-215172

(...) The United States has mishandled the situation in other ways, in the view of the Israelis I spoke with. For example, U.S. efforts to train rebel fighters inside Syria to fight ISIS are widely seen as counterproductive. “The CIA [training] program goes against Assad and the Pentagon program only goes for rebels against ISIS,” the intelligence officer complained. “So what is the U.S. stance is not really clear here.”

Israeli analysts laid out several possible scenarios ahead for the Syrian civil war, including that Assad regains control of his country (not likely) and the regime grants some rebels group autonomy and economic incentives in return for coexistence (already well underway).

What they agree on is that Assad is now unquestionably winning. And he owes Hezbollah, the radical Shia Muslim proxy of Iran, “big time” for it.

The so-called Army of God, which has gone to war with Israel twice and constitutes a state within a state in neighboring Lebanon, has lost an estimated 1,700 fighters bleeding for the Syrian dictator and as payback is now seeking to expand its new base of operations in Syria—which also means a new sphere of influence for the mullahs in Tehran.

“If Assad wins,” one IDF official in the Golan Heights told me, “we will have Hezbollah on two borders not one.”

Yavne, the brigadier general, similarly described the Iranian influence as significantly more worrisome than ISIS or other Sunni Muslim terror groups:

“If I can be frank, the radical axis headed by Iran is more risky than the global jihad one," said Yavne. “It is much more knowledgeable, stronger, with a bigger arsenal.”

As far as these Israeli officers are concerned, the ideal strategy is to sit back and let both types of groups duke it out—and work to contain the conflict rather than trying to end it with military force. As the IDF intelligence officer put it, “the battle for deterrence is easier than the battle for influence.”

But does that mean the United States and its allies should simply allow ISIS to retain its so-called caliphate in parts of eastern Syria and eastern Iraq?

“Why not?” the officer shot back. “When they asked the late [Israeli] Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the Iraq-Iran War in the 80s, who does Israel stand for, Iraq or Iran, he said, ‘I wish luck to both parties. They can go at it, killing each other.’ The same thing is here. You have ISIS killing Al Qaeda by the thousands, Al Qaeda killing ISIS by the thousands. And they are both killing Hezbollah and Assad.”

I asked an IDF official peering out into the Syrian frontier a similar question—about the consequences of America’s war against ISIS in the region.

“There is no lack of Islamic militant groups here,” he said, clutching a machine gun in one hand and a pineapple popsicle in another. “You just haven’t heard of them yet.”

Bryan Bender is POLITICO’s national security editor and the author of You Are Not Forgotten .

via @nidal

Are Hezbollah, Israel heading for a third war?
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/05/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-war-iran-us.html

Yet the most important development in Hezbollah’s military capability is the unprecedented opportunity that came with its participation in the Syrian war. It now has the ability to train thousands of its fighters, who are rubbing shoulders with Syrian, Iranian and Russian elite special forces, while also developing its telecommunications, logistics, and command and control capabilities to handle a situation where hundreds of its fighters can fight nonstop for weeks and months in a vast, hostile environment. This is a huge leap from 2006, when Hezbollah only deployed independent small fire teams and squads in defensive fortified positions, in a friendly environment, while awaiting the advance of Israeli infantry and armor units.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s threat in 2011 to invade northern Israel is no longer so far-fetched, neither are his threats to hit the nuclear facility in Dimona. Israel takes these threats very seriously, hence the fortification works along the Blue Line. Hezbollah’s plan is simple and bold: Saturate Israel’s multi-layered air defense with hundreds of rockets and missiles while its fighters go on the offensive across the Blue Line — and perhaps even the Golan Heights.

According to sources familiar with Hezbollah, “A wider front will force Israel to spread out thinner, so now having the front expanded from Naqoura on the sea all the way to the end of the Golan Heights will prove to be more difficult for Israel in the event of a war.”

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/05/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-war-iran-us.html#ixzz4gwyhSx85

ISIS Fighters Regret Attacking Israel And Have ’Apologized’, Former Defense Minister Says
▻http://www.newsweek.com/isis-fighters-regret-attacking-israel-apologize-defense-minister-591020

Fighters loyal to the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) have apologized for launching an attack on Israeli forces last year in the disputed Golan Heights region, according to Israel’s former defense minister.

[…]

"There was one case recently where Daesh opened fire and apologized,” Ya’alon said, using the Arabic-language acronym for ISIS, according to The Times of Israel.

[…]

The November attack was the first and only clash since between Israel and ISIS, which Tel Aviv has labeled a terrorist organization.

Je mettrais ça dans: #le_gorafi_encore_plagié

L’idée-qu’elle-est-bonne du jour, par nos amis les professionnels du Droit international: ’With Syria in pieces, it’s time to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan’
▻http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/With-Syria-in-pieces-its-time-to-recognize-Israels-annexation-of-the-Golan-48

Michael Oren says it is time for the world to recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

In contrast to negotiations with the Palestinians, there is no Syria to negotiate with, Deputy Minister for Diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office Oren said on Tuesday.

“Without Israel there [in the Golan], the region would be jeopardized. ISIS would be on the Kinneret,” he said, adding that other states in the region are glad Israel is on the Golan. This is one of several important outcomes of the 1967 war still felt today.

Israel annexed the Golan in 1981 in a decision that was never recognized internationally.

Hezbollah’s No. 2: US strike on Syria mere ‘muscle flexing’
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/04/lebanon-hezbollah-syria-war-israel-us-military-strikes.html

Al-Monitor: That means that Hezbollah is not planning on creating a “new resistance front” in the Golan Heights?

Qassem: The question of the Golan Heights concerns the people of the Golan and Syria. If the people there decide to start a resistance or a similar action, this would be their call and the call of people working on the ground. But we do not want to discuss Hezbollah’s position in this regard.

Al-Monitor: A recent report by the International Crisis Group said that Hezbollah’s alliance with President Bashar al-Assad has become a burden, and the party is now seen as a Shiite militia. What do you think of this statement?

Qassem: Hezbollah is a resistance fighting to bring down the Israeli project and is now fighting [in Syria] to put an end to the new takfiri project, which emanates from the Israeli plan. When we fight, we cooperate with all concerned parties, be they Sunnis, nationalists, secularists, Christians or any other national affiliations, according to the place, time and circumstances. Therefore, Hezbollah is a resistance project, and everyone knows that. Hezbollah’s network of contacts, be it in the Lebanese or Syrian arena, or anywhere it is needed, goes beyond sects and factions. These inaccurate reports have no weight on the ground and are only part of the political media lobbying to harm Hezbollah, but they are ineffective.

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/04/lebanon-hezbollah-syria-war-israel-us-military-strikes.html#ixzz4eaxKbZ7

Une milice irakjienne sous le contrôle des Gardiens de la Révolution Iraniens crée la Brigade de Liberation du Golan

IRGC-controlled Iraqi militia forms ‘Golan Liberation Brigade’ | FDD’s Long War Journal
▻http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/03/irgc-controlled-iraqi-militia-forms-golan-liberation-brigade.php

http://www.longwarjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Golan-2-1024x682.jpg

The Iranian-controlled Iraqi militia Harakat al Nujaba this week announced the formation of its “Golan Liberation Brigade.” While it is not uncommon for entities to name themselves after areas they aim to “liberate,” the militia’s spokesman has said that the unit could assist the Syrian regime in taking the Golan Heights, a region in the Levant that has been controlled by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.

#Syrie #Golan #Iran #IRGC

Israel disturbed to see its ISIS and al-Qaida allies pushed back by Syrian army in Golan Heights
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/828255136095076352
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.769628

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C36Np27WEAEoHgh.jpg

Israel backtracks, delays vote after initially agreeing to EU program that excludes settlements - Israel News - Haaretz.com

Following Haaretz report, Israel changes course on proposal for joint culture program that would have effectively endorsed European boycott of the settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Barak Ravid Jan 29, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.768161

Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev said on Sunday morning, following a report in Haaretz, that she objects to a proposal set to be brought to the cabinet on Israel joining an EU cultural initiative since it would exclude the settlements. Since then, the cabinet secretariat announced that the issue will be taken off the agenda of Sunday’s cabinet meeting. 
Regev published her statement despite the fact that the official document on the government proposal, circulated to ministers by the Prime Minister’s Bureau on Wednesday, clearly states that she supports the move.
The EU program, called Creative Europe, involves cooperation between EU and non-EU countries in the areas of culture and media. The significance of the proposal is that the government of Israel would in effect be agreeing to a European boycott of the settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
“The culture minister supports international cooperation in the field of culture. However, if the agreement with the European Union that the Foreign Ministry is proposing includes a boycott of Judea and Samaria – Minister Regev will oppose it and the Culture Ministry won’t be a party to this agreement,” the statement said, referring to the West Bank settlements.
Regev’s office also said that she plans to turn to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is to submit the proposal in his capacity as foreign minister, clarify her opposition and ask to remove the topic from the cabinet meeting’s agenda.
By joining the initiative, Israel would be showing its willingness to accept the exclusion of cultural institutions from the settlements in exchange for EU funding of institutions within Israel.

Israeli MK : IDF helping #al-Qaida in Syria at expense of Druse
▻http://m.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israeli-MK-IDF-helping-al-Qaida-in-Syria-at-expense-of-Druse-467518

Kulanu MK Akram Hasson issued a harsh rebuke of the IDF on Monday, saying that not only is the army not helping the Druse population caught up in Syria’s civil war, it is cooperating with the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate.

Hasson’s comments in an interview with Channel 2 came amid fierce battles in recent days near the Druse village of Khader in the Syrian #Golan Heights.

Hasson accused #Israel of being responsible for harm being caused to the Druse population of the Syrian Golan. “The IDF is shelling Syrian army positions, which is enabling the Nusra Front to seize Druse land.”

The Kulanu MK further charged that “it is no secret that the IDF is cooperating with [the Nusra Front]. In the past they have told us that the Nusra Front coordinates with the IDF. We don’t know? What, were we born yesterday?”

Hasson claimed that under former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon there was an agreement in place by which it was understood that nobody would enter the Druse village, and in exchange the local Druse would not interfere with the fighting in the area.

“Today, after they took control of the most strategic positions and after the Syrian army left the area, they blocked the access road to Damascus, and isolated Khader from the rest of Syria, and they are slaughtering people,” he added.

Hasson’s comments came a day after some 200 Israeli Druse held a demonstration in Majd al-Shams, calling on Israel to help their Syrian brethren.

The village of Khader, which is right across from Majd al-Shams, on the other side of Mount Hermon, is home to some 25,000 Druse.

The Nusra Front has sought to control Khader for some time in order to gain control of the entire Golan Heights. The al-Qaida-linked fighters number several hundred men as well as dozens of tanks that they have seized.

During fierce fighting near Khader last year, and fear for the Druse community, the IDF sent messages to the Nusra Front through the Free Syrian Army, warning the Islamist group not to harm Syria’s Druse.

#druzes

Will Israel create safe zone in southern Syria?
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/southern-syria-opposition-israel-safe-zone.html

According to Labwani, “When Israel helps the Syrian people in the south with aid and medication, they stop looking at Israel as the enemy and a threat. Today the atmosphere is very appropriate to do this.” He added that Israel operates a comprehensive intelligence-gathering and communication network across the south.

“People are poor now and hungry, so would work for anyone for a little money,” he said. “[Israel] has access everywhere and to a lot of information.”

Moti Kahana is the Israeli-American founder of the US-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Amaliah advocating for the safe zone. Kahana, who works closely with Labwani, said the Israeli government has given him the green light to operate within the designated safe zone.

“We started working already,” Kahana told Al-Monitor from his office in New York. “So in the next few weeks, we will be bringing supplies into the safe zone of Syria.” He went on, “The Israeli government will allow us to bring humanitarian supplies to the Syrian people,” adding that Israel is “willing to allow an American NGO — which is us — to expand and bring in supplies.”

Kahana explained that the first stage is to bring in medicine and equipment, the second stage is to open schools and focus on education, and the third stage is to help create and equip a local police force. “We have identified which towns and villages we will be working in, but I cannot yet share their exact locations,” he said. He also declined to identify the opposition groups the organization is coordinating with.

And sure enough, following the establishment of the liaison unit, Israeli aid suddenly appeared in opposition-held areas. Abu Omar al-Joulani, spokesman for the Revolutionary Command Council for Quneitra and Golan, told Al-Monitor, “A network of collaborators working with the Israelis enabled this aid to come through from the occupied Golan Heights.”

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/southern-syria-opposition-israel-safe-zone.html#ixzz4FYKUcGgT

Sunday, May 29, 2016
ISIS and Israel
▻http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2016/05/isis-and-israel.html

There is a strange relationship between Israel and a small sect of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) based next to the Golan Heights. The very presence of a group like ISIS so close to Israel poses many questions. Firstly why has ISIS not attacked Israel – a country they have sworn to destroy – from said base? Similarly why has the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) not attacked this small and weak group of extremists on their border? The answers to such questions show the truth behind the rhetoric all actors use in this conflict...Israel is focused not on ISIS and Sunni groups, but on the Shia groups in Syria. Israel’s airstrikes have hit Assad’s Shia-backed regime and Hezbollah, not ISIS or al-Nusra. Correspondence between the then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and political advisor Jacob Sullivan about Israel’s aims in the region tried to rationalise why Israel ignores ISIS." (thanks Helena)
Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 2:22 PM

Correspondence : ▻http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/pdfs/C05791550.pdf

Putin Plays ’Energy Chess’ with Netanyahu
F. William Engdahl | Wed, May 11, 2016
▻http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/putin-plays-energy-chess-netanyahu/ri14256

http://russia-insider.com/sites/insider/files/6453614499383640360no.jpg

On April 21 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Moscow for closed door talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The media reported that the talks were over the situation in Syria, a theme where Moscow has made certain a regular hotline dialogue exists to avoid potential military clashes. It seems, however, that the two discussed quite another issue–potential Russian involvement in developing Israel’s giant offshore Leviathan gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean. Were the two to strike a deal, the geopolitical implications could be enormous for Putin and Russia’s strategic role in the Middle East as well as for the future of the US influence in the region.

Israeli press reported the Netanyahu-Putin talks as being about “coordination between forces in skies above war-torn country, status of Golan Heights…”

According to Russian state media reports, however, in addition, Netanyahu and Putin discussed the potential role of Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, the world’s largest natural gas producer and marketer, as a possible stakeholder in Israel’s Leviathan natural gas field. Russian involvement in the stalled Israeli gas development would reduce financial risk for Israeli offshore gas operations and increase the gas fields’ security, as Russian allies like Hezbollah in Lebanon or Iran would not dare target Russian joint ventures.

If the Russian reports are accurate, it could portend a major new step in Putin energy geopolitics in the Middle East, one which could give Washington a major defeat in her increasingly inept moves to control the world’s center of oil and gas.

Russian interest

Many outside observers might be surprised that Putin would be in such a dialogue with Netanyahu, a longstanding US ally. There are many factors behind it. One is the leverage Russia’s President has through the presence of more than one million ethnic Russians in Israel, including a cabinet member in Netanyahu’s government. More importantly, since the Obama Administration went ahead, over vehement Netanyahu protests, to sign the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, relations between Washington and Tel Aviv have chilled to put it mildly.

The situation is being skillfully mined by Putin and Russia.

Shooting the Holy Land

http://aperture.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Web08_Koudelka-Shooting-Holy-Land_Copyright-Gilad-Baram15.jpg http://aperture.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/05_Koudelka-Shooting-Holy-Land_Copyright-Josef-Koudelka-Magnum-Photos.jpg

▻http://aperture.org/blog/shooting-holy-land/?redirect_log_mongo_id=5704c14461336413e9490900&redirect_mongo_id=57042ee5

The genre of documentary films about documentary photographers has grown considerably and admirably over the last twenty-five years, including The Salt of the Earth (2014), about Sebastião Salgado, by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado; What Remains (2008) about Sally Mann, by Steven Cantor; War Photographer (2001), about James Nachtwey, by Christian Frei; and Pictures from a Revolution (1991), about Susan Meiselas, by Meiselas and Alfred Guzzetti, to name a few of the best.

To this list we can now add Koudelka Shooting Holy Land (2015), by the young Israeli photographer and filmmaker Gilad Baram. Baram was hired to assist Koudelka in Israel and the Palestinian territories by making travel arrangements and providing security, logistical support, and captions as the photographer worked on his epic project to document the building of the wall in Israel, culminating in the book Wall: Israeli & Palestinian Landscape, 2008–2012, published by Aperture in 2013.

Josef Koudelka, Rachel’s Tomb, 2009 © Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

Josef Koudelka, born in 1938, is arguably one of the greatest living photographers. He burst onto the international stage in 1968, when he photographed the Russian invasion of his native Prague. His photographs were smuggled out of Prague to Magnum and published anonymously, but they were so distinctive that they refused to remain anonymous. His later books Gypsies (Aperture, 1975) and Exiles (Aperture, 1988) changed how people view documentary photography. More recently, his work has focused on panoramic landscapes.

Koudelka is part of a generation of documentary photographers who believe fervently that if you show people what is actually happening in the world, they will understand and be moved to demand change. Social documentary photography has always been defined by this passionate subjective belief in democracy and action. Without it, the practice devolves into self-involved sensationalistic pandering.
Josef Koudelka, A crusader map mural, Kalya Junction, Near the Dead Sea, 2009 © Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

Josef Koudelka, A crusader map mural, Kalya Junction, Near the Dead Sea, 2009 © Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

This makes the filmic documenting of documentarians a rather precarious process. If you shift the focus of your inquiry too completely to the photographer, and away from his or her subject, you risk the diminution of the subject and obscure the motive force of the work.

At first viewing, one might think that Gilad Baram has made a nature film, perhaps about a particular species of bird. Everything this creature does has one purpose: to make better images. Everything else is peripheral. So Baram lets the peripheral in. What is happening around the photographer becomes the filmmaker’s subject, and this periphery is loaded with meaning, because the social landscape impinging on the wall is an especially complex one: the enforced borders between the State of Israel and its Other within, the Palestinians of the occupied territories.
Josef Koudelka, Shu’fat Refugee camp, overlooking Al ’Isawiya, East Jerusalem, 2009 © Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

Josef Koudelka, Shu’fat Refugee camp, overlooking Al ‘Isawiya, East Jerusalem, 2009 © Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

Koudelka continuously and relentlessly points his formidable and precise beak, a Fuji GX617 panoramic camera, into the crevices and fissures of this fraught border, and the official enforcers react with increasingly menacing warnings. As we watch Koudelka repeatedly violate these boundaries as he attempts to get into position to make the best photographs, we recall Magnum cofounder Robert Capa’s famous injunction: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” When Koudelka gets close, a disembodied voice from a loudspeaker barks, “Photographer, move away from the fence! Go back, photographer. Move back!”

Koudelka is not photographing war here, but the visible wounds of war in the form of walls built to control the movements of the enemy within. His movements reflect the preemptive violence of these walls that shatters lives on both sides of the divide. “One wall. Two jails.”

At one point, seventy-five-year-old Koudelka painstakingly slides on his back under and inside a mass of razor wire, trying to get into position to compose a shot, as the barbs tear his clothes. All that matters is the photographs, because they’re the only thing that will last. The characteristically laconic photographer says little about the situation, directly. “I hate the Wall. But, at the same time, it is pretty spectacular, this Wall.” He speaks at one point about the necessity “to keep the healthy anger; to keep it as long as possible.”
Josef Koudelka in Israel/Palestine. Still from Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land, 2015 © Gilad Baram

#Josef_Koudelka in Israel/Palestine. Still from Koudelka: #Shooting_Holy_Land, 2015 © Gilad Baram

But mostly, he only talks about the pictures: “In this place there is a picture waiting for me.” There is a lot of waiting. Waiting for the picture, waiting for the weather to break, waiting to get into position. Watching, looking, moving, waiting. “Sometimes it happens. Sometimes not.”

Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem; Qalandiya Checkpoint in Ramallah; “Detroit” (Al Baladiya) Urban Warfare Training Facility near Tze’elim; Shab Al Dar in East Jerusalem; the Judean Desert; the memorial site for the Israeli Army’s 679th Armored Brigade in the Golan Heights; Mount Gerizim in Nablus. Four frames on a roll of 120mm film. One day = 20 rolls. Focus to infinity.

David Levi Strauss is a writer and critic based in New York and the author, most recently, of Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photography (2014).

Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land will be screened at Finale Plzen, April 15–21, 2016 and DOK.fest Munich, May 5–15, 2016.

#Israël #Palestine #photographie #paysage

Towards a Post-Apartheid Palestine: Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem | THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE

►http://thefunambulist.net/2016/01/22/towards-a-post-apartheid-palestine-atlas-of-the-israeli-settlements-

http://thefunambulist.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Atlas-of-the-Israeli-settlements-The-Funambulist-2015.jpg

Towards a Post-Apartheid Palestine: Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East JerusalemJanuary 22, 2016
Architecture & Design / Cartography / History / Law - By: Léopold Lambert

If I had composed this Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a few years ago, I would have insisted that this inventory of colonial urban typologies constituted an evidence of the Israeli violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, I would have reminded the history of the invasion of the West Bank and East Jerusalem (as well as the Gaza Strip, the Sinai and the Golan Heights) in 1967 and the military rule that subjugated and continues to subjugate the Palestinian bodies since then, I would have referred to these colonized territories as “Palestinian land as recognized by the International Community,” etc. This is however not what I am going to do here, because I am convinced that this narrative and the imaginary it conveys is ultimately harmful to all Palestinians and, for the same reasons, to non-Zionist Israelis too. On the contrary (or, rather, in an apparent contradiction), I would like to undertake the rather perilous exercise of praising the Israeli settlements for the scenario of the post-apartheid future they accidentally allow.

#palestine #israël #occupation #colonisation #démolition

French government partners with Israeli settlement profiteer | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/french-government-partners-israeli-settlement-profiteer

https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2016-02/so_french_food_shufersal.png?itok=gcs1PqWp×tamp=1454557838

The French government is giving high-profile backing to an Israeli company that profits from settlements built on occupied Palestinian and Syrian land in violation of international law.

This month, Israel’s biggest supermarket chain Shufersal is sponsoring So French So Food, which it bills as a “Festival of scents and flavors from France.”

The event is co-organized by the Institut Français, the French government’s cultural arm, and Shufersal. It is also sponsored by the city of Toulouse.

During the month, Shufersal is heavily promoting French products in its stores.

Shufersal’s marketing materials and store displays for So French So Food state that the campaign is a partnership with the French embassy.

The Electronic Intifada has confirmed that these displays are being used in Shufersal stores in West Bank settlements.

The promotion will also bring more than two dozen French chefs and artisans to Israel. It aims to help French companies, whose executives will travel to Israel as part of the event, to export their goods.

But by backing this initiative, the French government will also help boost the profits of a company that operates extensively in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.

#Israël #France #BDS

Towards a Post-Apartheid Palestine: Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem | THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE
►http://thefunambulist.net/2016/01/22/towards-a-post-apartheid-palestine-atlas-of-the-israeli-settlements-

http://thefunambulist.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Atlas-of-the-Israeli-settlements-The-Funambulist-2015.jpg

If I had composed this Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a few years ago, I would have insisted that this inventory of colonial urban typologies constituted an evidence of the Israeli violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, I would have reminded the history of the invasion of the West Bank and East Jerusalem (as well as the Gaza Strip, the Sinai and the Golan Heights) in 1967 and the military rule that subjugated and continues to subjugated the Palestinian bodies since then, I would have refer to these colonized territories as “Palestinian land as recognized by the International Community,” etc. This is however not what I am going to do here, because I am convinced that this narrative and the imaginary it conveys is ultimately harmful to all Palestinians and, for the same reasons, to non-Zionist Israelis too. On the contrary (or, rather, in an apparent contradiction), I would like to undertake the rather perilous exercise of praising the Israeli settlements for the scenario of the post-apartheid future they accidentally allow.

Of course, this praise of the settlements could not be more independent from the politics that lead to their construction, their current apartheid function, as well as the militarized urban typology they constitute. The displacement of a part of the Israeli civil population, whether enacted by the government or retroactively legitimized by it, is part of a strategy of the fait accompli: occupying the invaded land with a civil infrastructure and population that make the withdrawal of the occupying army difficult and complicated. I wrote many times about the way the settlements and their (approximately) 750,000 inhabitants are currently organized at a territorial scale: the apartheid wall built in the beginning of the 2000s by the Sharon administration integrates an important amount of settlements on its Western side (see past map from my book, Weaponized Architecture), many of others are linked to the Western side of the wall by small highways, some of which are only allowed to cars with an Israeli (yellow) plate — these roads are punctuated by military checkpoints that ensure to maximize the Israeli movement while slowing down, if not stopping, the Palestinian one (see the recent visualization of such inequality created by Al Jazeera). As for the settlements’ urbanism, their spatial formation (both urbanistically and topographically), their architecture, as well as their fenced periphery make them redoubtable militarized instruments, despite an aesthetic of Western suburbs, as Eyal Weizman demonstrated in his successive collaborations with Rafi Segal (A Civilian Occupation) and Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti (Decolonizing Architecture).

A lire le très bon article dans Newsweek de Nour Samaha sur les stratégies de consolidation de l’annexion du Golan syrien par Israël à la faveur de la guerre en Syrie :
▻http://newsweekme.com/blurred-future

“The crisis has given Israel an opportunity to work on the new generation; telling them to bring their relatives from Syria because they’re cutting heads [there] and the situation is getting worse,” said Safadi. “Those who have taken the citizenship say it is because they’re not getting anything from Syria, that they want to travel and live their lives.”
Zahwa believes that by opening up the economy and boosting the tourism industry, Israel is attempting to draw a more attractive future for Golan residents compared to what Syria can offer.
“Israel is trying to make a new alternative, a political, economic and social alternative, because of the situation in Syria,” she said.
At the same time, Israeli officials have gone into overdrive with their naturalization campaign and have rejected any notion of reviving peace negotiations with Syria.
Naftali Bennett, a senior Israeli official and leader of the right-wing party The Jewish Home, said it was high time the world recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan.
“I want to challenge the entire world… I want to give the international community an opportunity to demonstrate their ethics.
Recognize the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” he said at a conference in June last year. “Who do they want us to give the Golan to? To Assad? Today, it is clear that if we listened to the world we would give up the Golan and [Daesh] would be swimming in the Sea of Galilee.”