IDF kills Syrians to 'prove' Iran deal is wrong
A background account by AFP follows the lead article from JPost.
An Israeli soldier directs a tank during an exercise in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, near the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria August 21, 2015. Israel said it killed at least five Palestinian militants in an air strike on the Syrian Golan Heights on Friday, after cross-border rocket fire from there prompted the heaviest Israeli bombardment since the start of Syria’s four-year-old civil war. Photo by Baz Ratner / Ratner
‘Israeli bombing of Syria aimed at rallying US Jews against Iran nuclear deal’
Photographs showing the vehicle which was bombed by IDF forces in the Syrian province of Quneitra were published on Friday, Arab media reported.
By Yasser Okbi / Maariv Hashavua, JPost
August 22, 2015
The Israeli reprisals against targets in Syria which were launched on Thursday and Friday were a means to rally American Jewish public opinion against the Iran nuclear agreement, pro-Iranian and Hezbollah officials told Arab media over the weekend.
Photographs showing the vehicle which was bombed by IDF forces in the Syrian province of Quneitra were published on Friday, Arab media reported.
Five people inside the vehicle were killed in the airstrike. The group was suspected of firing rockets toward Israel in an attack on Thursday.
According to the official news agency of Syria, SANA, the vehicle which was destroyed by the Israeli air force was a civilian vehicle carrying five Syrian nationals. Syria said the attack was “part of the enemy’s (Israel’s) aid towards Islamist terrorist operating in the region.”
The news agency also reported that during the time of the aerial attack, insurgents attempted to take over the town of al-Baath, but they withdrew after a tough battle.
Provincial governor Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Qader visited the city’s Buildings and Transportation Authority to view damage caused by the Israeli Air Force attack on two buildings.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah was on high alert on the southern border. The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai quoted what he called “insiders” as saying that the Shi’ite organization heightened security along the border with Israel “for fear of attempts by Israel to drag Lebanon into the escalation with Syria in something that is less than war, but more than a standard military operation.”
Quneitra/ Al Qunaytira is on the right by the UNDOF zone.
Hezbollah operatives believe that Israel may be planning to take action against them because the Israeli leadership considers the current situation as “critical” due to the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran.
“For the last 35 years, Iran was able to assist resistance movements led by Hezbollah and Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip despite imposed sanctions against it,” said Arab sources.
“What would happen then, if Iran had nuclear capabilities in addition to its economic and military capabilities? It would be more powerful, particularly after Russia opened its strategic warehouses.”
It also stated that “the Israeli escalation came in parallel to the accusations of Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who blamed Iran for being responsible for firing rockets into northern Israel and while the Israeli air force began to attack Syria.”
According to the report, “Israel wants to mobilize the American Jewish side, before the vote in Congress on the nuclear deal.”
Israel responds to Syria rocket fire with artillery, air strikes
By AFP
August 20, 2015
Israel launched artillery and air strikes against Syrian army positions in the Golan Heights on Thursday night in response to rocket fire, military sources said.
The army launched “five to six” strikes against Syrian positions, the sources said, after four rockets crashed in the Galilee region of northern Israel and in the occupied Golan, in attacks that did not cause any casualties.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group had earlier reported that the Israeli army had launched strikes on regime positions in the Syrian-held sector of the Golan and that Syrian troops were killed in the strikes.
The state-run Syrian news agency SANA for its part said an Israeli helicopter had fired rockets on Quneitra in the Syrian sector of the Golan Heights. The strikes hit two local government buildings but caused only material damage, it said.
Israel had warned the government in war-racked Syria that it would “suffer the consequences” after Thursday’s rocket attacks, which it said had been masterminded by a senior Iranian official.
“This was the work of Islamic Jihad, an organisation financed and working for Iran, and we consider the Syrian government responsible for the firing and it will suffer the consequences,” the army had said in a statement.
It was referring to a Palestinian militant group which is based in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon, in a statement, accused Iran of seeking to “open a new terrorist front against Israel on the Golan Heights”.
Thursday’s tit-for-tat strikes came as Mohammed Allan, a Palestinian detainee who Islamic Jihad says is one of its members, ended a two-month hunger strike over his detention without trial by the Israeli authorities.
The Islamic Jihad denied the military’s accusation, saying it was not behind the rocket fire.
“This is an attempt by the (Israeli) occupier to turn attention away from the crimes it is committing against the Palestinian prisoners, and in particular Mohammed Allan,” a statement by the group said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ya’alon visited northern Israel on Tuesday to meet military officials.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan from neighbouring Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it 14 years later, in a move never recognised by the international community.
Since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011, the Golan has been tense, with a growing number of rockets and mortar rounds hitting the Israeli side, mostly stray, prompting occasional armed responses.