Israeli and Syrian Druze join forces - complicating Israel's military position vis-à-vis southern Syria -
http://www.debka.com/article/24687/Israeli-and-Syrian-Druze-join-forces---complicating-Israel's-military-position-vis-à-vis-southern-Syria Even if Druze tempers are temporarily calmed over the fate of their Syrian brethren, the fallout from the Syrian civil war has already spilled over into Israel from an unexpected quarter. For nearly five years, Israel carefully kept its hands off the conflict raging on its northern border, restricting itself to responding ad hoc to dangers and building a quiet aid mechanism for selected Syrian rebels. But in recent months, Israel has re-channeled its military intervention into areas close to its border.
The way this involvement is disavowed by Israeli officials is seriously detrimental to the government's military credibility.
When IDF spokesman Brig. Motti Almoz reiterated past statements that the military does not identify or assort by organization the injured Syrian rebels reaching the Israeli Golan border for treatment, he found that the Druze serving in Israel's armed forces and those living in Golan villages knew better. Israeli Druze and Golan villagers - many loyal to Bashar Assad - were so incensed by this and past evasions that they came together for violent action - hence the attacks Monday, June 22, on two IDF ambulances ferrying injured Syrian rebel fighters to hospital.
After the first ambulance was attacked, the second should have been much better secured. It turned out that the military police escorting it were not up to fighting a raging Druze lynch mob outside Majdal Shams on the Golan. The Syrians were badly beaten up and one died later.
Israeli and Golan Druze have found a common cause, in itself a destabilizing factor, in the conviction that Israel is aiding the Syrian Al Qaeda arm, the Nusra Front, although some of the information from South Syria is disinformation slanted by hostile elements for stirring up trouble for Israel.
The thousand-year old secretive sect is treated as heretic by jihadis, including the Nusra Front. When a rebel alliance neared Jabal Druze in Syria, Nusra leaders promised not to harm the Druze provided that they "retreat from their religious mistakes." They then forced several hundred Druze to convert to Sunni Islam and desecrated their shrines.
Nusra Front is therefore a red flag for the Druze bull
This is just one more complicating factor in considering the ill-defined, fractious rebel alliance fighting in South Syria across from the Israeli Golan.
Israeli protestations that it doesn't support Al Qaeda-linked rebels may hold true one day, while the next day, that same group may break up and join a jihadi faction. Some of them are constantly on the move in and out of Al Qaeda.
Saudi Arabia ran up against this phenomenon in recent weeks when it bought and armed 3,000 Nusra Front fighters on condition that they leave their group and join up under an umbrella anti-Assad rebel front called the Southern Front, or the Southern Army of Conquest.
The Saudi step relieved Israel of charges of supporting jihadi movements. But it was no means let off the hook as far as the Druze were concerned, because of the notoriously volatile nature of the rebel movement.
Most of Nusra's commanders did indeed repudiate their allegiance to Al Qaeda to win Saudi backing, but they soon switched back after Nusra in the north spearheaded major rebel victories. Clearly, victorious groups hold a fatal attraction for the hundreds of hazy rebel factions
The Druze demand for Israel to abandon the Nusra Front is tantamount to its repudiating the Syrian rebel cause at large. For the IDF this is a non-option: Ditching its under-the-radar links with certain Syrian rebel groups is the recipe for ending the relative calm on its Golan border with Syria. And withdrawing from its cooperation with the US-Saudi-Jordanian backed rebel force would endanger their effort to capture southern Syria, in the same way as comparable forces attained control of most of the north.
At the same time, the Israeli government must persuade its up-in-arms Druze citizens that IDF actions in South Syria will not bring harm to their Syrian brethren. This is an uphill task that may not prevent further Druze violence.
US rebuffs Israel's last-ditch bid for nuclear constraints in Iran accord -
http://www.debka.com/article/24683/US-rebuffs-Israel's-last-ditch-bid-for-nuclear-constraints-in-Iran-accord Israel's National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen was invited to join two top US officials for dinner in Washington on June 15 to try and make Israel's case for amending the disastrous nuclear accord taking shape in Vienna between the six world powers and Iran, before it was too late. This meeting is reported here by debkafile for the first time. It was hosted by US National Security Adviser Susan Rice and senior US nuclear negotiator Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman.
The occasion was arranged by CIA Director John Brennan at the end of his visit to Jerusalem in the first week of June. He had come to offer senior Israelis, led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a behind-the-scenes briefing on the provisions the Obama administration had accepted for the final nuclear accord with Iran due to be signed by June 30.
This briefing was greeted in Jerusalem with shock and alarm. Very few of the conditions for a deal stipulated by the US upon embarking on the negotiations had survived: Iran would continue to enrich uranium, be allowed to bar international inspections of military facilities suspected of hosting nuclear research activity (where were Obama's "intrusive inspections?) and - Israeli officials heard this for the first time - the Iranian UCF facility at Isfahan would be expanded. This plant is engaged in the conversion of "yellow cake" to enriched nuclear material.
They also discovered that President Obama, who had originally promised the deal would provide for "snapping sanctions back" in the event of violations, had assured Tehran that once sanctions were lifted, they would not be re-imposed.
Netanyahu asked Brennan for time to digest the full extent of the Obama administration's retreat in the face of Iran's nuclear aspirations. He then asked for his national security adviser to be given a chance to propose changes that would allay some of Israel's concerns.
Brennan quickly set up a date for Cohen to be received in Washington.
debkafile's Washington sources reveal that at the dinner in Washington, the Israeli official tried a new tack with his hostesses, Rice and Sherman. On the understanding that the main clauses of the nuclear accord had been finalized and gone past the stage of amendment, he nonetheless suggested a number of insertions in the various clauses that would make it a better deal for American as well as Israeli security.
Rice and Sherman politely allowed him to finish talking and then turned his proposals down flat.
US and Israeli official sources agree that the invitation to Cohen had not been intended for any serious discussion between the two governments on the Iranian nuclear issue. The two top American officials dealing with the nuclear question barely heard a word that Cohen said. His journey to Washington was a complete waste of time.
Israel slams 'politically motivated and morally flawed' UN Gaza report - By Marissa Newman -
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-slams-politically-motivated-and-morally-flawed-un-gaza-report/ Foreign Ministry says investigators 'lacked much of the relevant information'; Netanyahu concludes 'report is biased'
Israel on Monday said it would "seriously" evaluate the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry on the Gaza conflict, while politicians from left and right slammed the international body for bias and declared that the international investigators lacked access to evidence.
The report, released in Geneva on Monday afternoon, said both Israel and Hamas may have committed war crimes during the 50-day war last summer. The UN Human Rights Council report (download) placed blame on both parties but focused more on Israel's role.
It also accepted the Palestinian death count, which has Israel killing 1,462 civilians out of a total of 2,251 Palestinians who died - a 65 percent ratio.
"The report is biased," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response. "Israel is not perpetrating war crimes but rather protecting itself from an organization that carries out war crimes. We won't sit back with our arms crossed as our citizens are attacked by thousands of missiles."
The Human Rights Council "in practice does everything but worry about human rights," the prime minister charged. "The commission spends more time condemning Israel than Iran, Syria and North Korea put together."
The Foreign Ministry in an official statement said the report "was commissioned by a notoriously biased institution, given an obviously biased mandate, and initially headed by a grossly biased chairperson, William Schabas," in reference to the original chairman of the probe who resigned in February amid Israeli allegations of bias over consulting work he once did for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
With Schabas's appointment, the commission of inquiry "was politically motivated and morally flawed from the outset," it said.
Still, the Foreign Ministry said it would investigate the claims of the report.
"Just as Israel seriously considered every complaint, no matter its origin, it will also seriously study this report. We take note of the fact that the authors of this report admitted that they lacked much of the relevant information."
Israel had refused to cooperate with the international probe or to grant entry to investigators into the coastal enclave, arguing that the inquiry's conclusions were pre-written.
The Foreign Ministry also castigated the UN Human Rights Council investigation for failing to distinguish between the Israeli military and Hamas.
"It is regrettable that the report fails to recognize the profound difference between Israel's moral behavior during Operation Protective Edge and the terror organizations it confronted," the Foreign Ministry said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely defended the Israeli army's conduct during the conflict, saying the measures it took to safeguard Palestinian civilian lives were "without parallel" globally.
"The State of Israel and the IDF scrupulously abide by the highest standards of international law," she said.
"The measures Israel took during the Gaza Conflict to protect the lives of Israeli and Palestinian civilians are without parallel among other military forces," Hotovely said in a statement.
"From the outset, the purpose of this report was to vilify the State of Israel and the IDF, with the ultimate aim of undermining Israel's right to defend its citizens from attack," she said, adding that the Human Rights Council "has completely discredited itself through its obsessive and prejudicial preoccupation with Israel, while turning a blind eye to genuine violations of human rights around the world."
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, breaking an earlier directive from Netanyahu not to comment on the findings, termed the inquiry "a report with blood on its hands, because it permits the killing of Jews."
"This is a report with blood on its hand because it ties our soldiers' hands [preventing them] from defending the residents of the south and the entire state. This is a report with blood on its hands because it skips over the murder of the teens as if it didn't happen and isn't worthy of investigation," he added, in reference to the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank last June.
The UN report also drew criticism from members of the opposition.
"The IDF is a moral military and I don't need any international report or commission to know this," said Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog. "While for Hamas killing innocents is the main goal, I can say from my own experience in many cabinet meetings that the question of hurting noncombatants is always on the table and a very significant consideration in operational decisions."
Zionist Union co-chief Tzipi Livni lambasted the report for comparing the IDF and Gaza terror groups.
"We will not accept a comparison between terrorists and IDF soldiers. We will not agree to IDF soldiers and terrorists being mentioned in the same breath, and this distinction is important for any country fighting terrorism," she said. "IDF soldiers are fighting terrorists, even if sometimes civilians are hurt. Terror organizations do not discriminate and kill civilians and soldiers."
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigor Liberman, a former foreign minister, accused the Hman Rights Council itself of committing war crimes.
"Israel does not commit war crimes. The UN's Human Rights Commission and the biased panels it establishes regularly commit crimes against humanity by rewriting history and distorting a reality in which one country fights to protect its children, who are being attacked by rockets fired by a terror organization [hiding behind] where children are found."
Netanyahu: International peace proposals are forced on Israel, push it to indefensible borders -
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-Terrorists-constantly-try-to-attacks-us-sometimes-they-succeed-406663 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday that the relative quiet that preceded Friday's terror attack in the West Bank in which 25-year-old Danny Gonen was killed, "shouldn't fool anyone."
Speaking at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting hours after an additional terror attack in which a Palestinian stabbed and critically wounded a Border Police officer, Netanyahu said that "we are faced with constant attempts to carry out terror attacks - unfortunately some of them succeed."
Addressing the search for Gonen's killer, Netanyahu said that security forces were "working diligently" to find him and bring him to justice.
Netanyahu said that only the intense measures taken by the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) prevent more terror attacks from being carried out successfully.
Ahead of a visit by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Sunday, who is expected to push a UN Security Council Resolution regarding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu said that "in the international proposals that are presented to us, and in fact forced upon us, there is no real addressing Israel's security needs and its other national interests."
"They simply try to push us to indefensible borders, while completely ignoring what will exist on the other side of the border," he said. "This will lead to the results that we are seeing, and experiencing at the expense of our flesh from Gaza and Lebanon," Netanyahu said.
He vowed to reject any effort to force a solution to the conflict on Israel from the outside, saying that the only way to reach an agreement was through bilateral negotiations.
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