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A unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stormed on December 9 the town of Khan Arnabeh in the southern Syrian governorate of Quneitra and clashed with the locals, causing casualties.
The unit set up checkpoints all around Khan Arnabeh, restricting the movement from and to the town. When a group of locals gathered near one of the checkpoints to protest, Israeli troops opened fire. Syrian state TV said that three people were wounded as a result.
Following the fall of the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad around a year ago, the IDF invaded the buffer zone adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights in Quneitra. Since then, Israeli troops have been conducting operations on a regular basis in Khan Arnabeh and many other towns in Qunitra and the neighboring governorates of Rif Dimashq and Daraa.
Video footage that emerged online after the last clash in Khan Arnabeh shows a large convoy of Syrian security forces passing right next to the IDF checkpoint that opened fire at locals. It is not clear from the footage if the forces were entering the town, or retreating from it.
The IDF later confirmed opening fire on “suspects” at the entrance to Khan Arnabeh. It said in a statement that “riots” erupted in the town as troops were operating there, during which “several suspects approached the forces and posed a threat to them.”
Israeli troops fired warning shots in the air, and after the suspects continued to approach, the soldiers fired at the legs of two “main instigators,” according to the military, which noted that riot dispersed and its troops withdrew from the town shortly afterword.
Earlier this year, Syria’s Islamist-led Interim Government declared its readiness to sign a security agreement with Israel. However, talks mediated by the United States reached a dead end in November with Israel refusing a demand by Syria to withdraw from the buffer zone.
Tensions between the two reached boiling point later in November when Israeli troops came under attack while conducting an operation to arrest suspects from a “terror group” in the town of Beit Jinn in Rif Dimashq. Six of the troops were wounded and at least 20 Syrians were killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes.
Later reports claimed that the U.S. pressured Israel over the deadly clash, and Syria made attempts to appease Israel by claiming to seize weapon shipments bound to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Still, talks on a security agreement didn’t move forward.
Speaking on the sideline of the annual Doha Forum in Qatar on December 6, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa made some of his sharpest comments against Israel to date.
Sharaa accused Israel of “exporting crises” to other countries around the region in order to distract from its “horrifying massacres” in the Gaza Strip.
“Israel… tries to run away from the horrifying massacres committed in Gaza, and it does so by attempting to export crises,” Sharaa said during an onstage interview.
“Israel has become a country that is in a fight against ghosts,” he claimed.
“Since we arrived in Damascus, we sent positive messages regarding regional peace and stability… and that we are not interested in being a country that exports conflict, including to Israel,” Sharaa continued.“But in return, Israel has met us with extreme violence,” Sharaa said.
“Syria has suffered massive violations of our airspace, and we’ve been victim of over 1000 airstrikes and over 400 incursions,” he added.
On December 8, the first anniversary of the fall of the Assad regime, Syrian troops who marched in Damascus in front of Sharaa and other senior military and government officials chanted for Gaza, even using military cadences used by Hamas and other Islamist factions from the Strip.
As Israeli troops were opening fire at the locals in Khan Arnabeh, the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper published a report revealing that U.S.-mediated talks between Israel and Syria produced “a written security agreement” in September, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ultimately refused to sign it.
All recent developments indicate that Israel and Syria are currently on an escalatory path, and that a security agreement is unlikely to be signed any time soon.
Despite this, a confrontation between the two sides is out of the question. Israel could, however, escalate further by resorting to its “war-between-the-wars” doctrine which calls for conducting covert operations against any emerging threat. The U.S. will not likely do anything to stop Israel, and Syria is guaranteed not to respond.
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syrians learned that it doesn’t pay to be a russian “ally”…heheheh
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