BILLION DOLLAR DEAL FOR ISRAEL
ANOTHER WEEKEND marathon of talks between US State Secretary John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yielded yet another Syrian ceasefire agreement — or, as it’s called nowadays, a “cessation of hostilities”. The CoH began on Monday evening and was immediately broken half a dozen times in a couple of hours by the Syrian government and its allies. Of course, many ceasefires are initially shaky before stabilising but there seems little hope of this truce being any more successful than that brokered in February which broke down completely in a matter of weeks.
It did not inspire confidence that neither Mr Kerry nor his chief spokesperson could seem to get their versions straight on whether the agreement would allow the Assad regime to attack Daesh and Al Qaeda-linked groups, with US and Russian coordination and even the White House officially stating that “we have some reasons to be skeptical that the Russians are able or are willing to implement the arrangement”. The various rebel groups certainly did not feel that the CoH was a fair deal, and uniformly rejected it.
Whatever the prospects of the US-Russia agreement, and they certainly seem poor, the fact that the Americans were even prepared to accept such a vague deal only emphasises the extent to which the Obama administration has given up on effecting any change in the Syrian war, where the death toll is steadily creeping to half a million.
The US, along with most of the rest of the western nations, seems to have accepted that Bashar Assad is not budging and are focusing solely on the slow war of attrition against Daesh.
That does not mean that the proAssad coalition is doing well. Russia is gradually reducing its active involvement, while Iran is still fielding its militias of Shia mercenaries. But on most of the main fronts, the various rebel groups are proving resilient. Five and a half years since the Syrian civil war broke out, while none of the sides involved are either on the verge of collapse or victory, a lasting ceasefire still seems unlikely.
While the main battles are fought around Aleppo, Damascus and on Syria’s northern borders, fighting is still ongoing on the Golan, just across from Israeli territory.
Israel has so far succeeded in not getting sucked in by the Syrian chaos, while maintaining its core interest of not allowing Iran and Hizbollah to establish a presence on the Golan.
It remains an ongoing challenge as the recent spate of shells falling on the Israeli side of the border over the last week has shown.
Israel believes that these were misfires but holds the Syrian army, which still has strongholds near the border, responsible. On Monday night Israeli aircraft carried out a retaliatory attack against a Syrian artillery position on the Golan, during which the Syrians fired to SAM missiles.
According to the IDF, Israeli aircraft were not endangered but the missile launch was a rare occurrence which could indicate an attempt by the regime to embroil Israel in the war.