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Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has publicly called for “settling the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights within the framework of the Israeli – Palestinian negotiations” adding that “part of this comprehensive bargain has to cover an understanding between Israel, the international community and the USA” and adding that “the Golan is part and parcel with Israel”.

The statement prompted a response by the Syrian government to the UN Secretary General and the President of the Security Council. The statement confirms information nsnbc received from a Palestinian intelligence expert in 2011 and 2012, who warned that Israel plans to permanently annex the Golan, parts of southern Lebanon and most of the West Bank, while planning to recognize a Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip plus micro enclaves in the West Bank. The statement also substantiates Christof Lehmann’s warnings about joint Israeli – US plans to that effect, issued in 2011, after the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly. During the 66th Session, US President Obama refused to recognize Palestine as a State, saying that “a solution for Palestine only could be found within the framework of a comprehensive solution for the Middle East“.

On Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry responded by sending two identical letters to the offices of the UN Secretary General and the President of the US Security Council, reports the Syrian news agency SANA. The letters inform the UN Secretary General and the UNSC President, that Lieberman made the statement on 31 January 2014, while visiting the occupied Syrian Golan. In the letters, the Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that the Israeli Foreign Minister’s statements embody an insolent approach to the events in Syria and recklessness with regard to relevant UN resolutions, such as UNSC resolution 497 (1981) and others, which call on Israel to end the occupation of the Syrian Golan and all Arab lands which Israel has occupied since 1967. The Syrian government quotes Lieberman as claiming that: ” The dangers to security, linked to our capability to defend the North of the country, require a recognition of Isrel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights by the international community”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that Israel is sponsoring terrorism in Syria and that Israel seems as if it mistakenly believes that it can exploit its sponsorship of the terrorist war on Syria to achieve its expansionist ambitions. The Syrian Foreign Ministry also stressed that 47 years have passed since Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and that Israel has defied hundreds of resolutions and calls on ending the occupation and to stop its inhuman racial policies and its killing of civilians in the Israeli occupied territories.

U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby stressed Monday night that the Obama administration does not consider the Golan Heights to be part of Israel, one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed they “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty.” “The U.S. position on the issue is unchanged,” Kirby told reporters during a daily briefing at the State Department in Washington. “This position was maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations. The current situation in Syria does not allow this,” Kirby continued.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz expressed support for Netanyahu’s comments on the Golan, saying that “the government of Israel reiterated the reality that the Golan Heights are part of Israel’s sovereign territory.” Cruz added that it’s “dangerous for the international community to try to pressure Israel to abandon the Golan to the chaos engulfing Syria.”

The U.S. is the second country after Germany to respond to Netanyahu’s declaration that the Golan, captured from Syria in the 1967 war and later annexed, “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty.” “It’s a basic principle of international law and the UN charter that no state can claim the right to annex another state’s territory just like that,” Martin Schaefer, spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, said Monday. Israel annexed the Golan in 198, in a move unanimously rejected the same year by the United Nations Security Council. Netanyahu’s declaration came as UN-sponsored international efforts are being made to obtain a political accord to end the civil war in Syria. Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office say that Syrian President Assad demanded that one principle upon which the international talks will be based is that the Golan Heights be considered occupied territory that must be returned to Syria. On Thursday, Netanyahu will fly to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Netanyahu’s senior aides say the prime minister plans to bring up this issue at their meeting and to stress the same message to Putin.

While no one, not even the White House, expects much movement on the Israeli-Palestinian issue to emerge from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current trip to Washington, another theater of conflict on Israel’s borders became a subject of discussion with US leaders

Netanyahu raised the issue of the Golan Heights, albeit obliquely, in his Monday meeting with US President Barack Obama, the Haaretz daily reported, citing sources familiar with the meeting. The Israeli leader hinted that given the ongoing war across the border in Syria and the jihadist militias and Iranian-backed forces slowly taking over the country, Israel now seeks American recognition of its annexation of the Golan Heights. Israel claims the western Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and took steps to formally annex in 1981. The plateau is considered a critical strategic asset for Israel because it overlooks the towns and villages of much of the Galilee. The issue was raised briefly by Netanyahu, the sources said, while the two leaders were speaking about the situation in Syria generally.

Netanyahu reportedly said he was doubtful that peace talks underway in Vienna between various outside powers and several factions in the Syrian war would result in reunifying the wartorn country. That reality, he said, “allows us to think differently” about the future status of the Golan, which several American administrations have seen as a key part of any future Israeli-Syrian peace. Obama did not reply to the Golan reference, and Netanyahu declined to answer reporters questions about the issue on Tuesday. The idea of raising the Golan issue at this time has been raised by several Israeli public figures close to Netanyahu.

srael has granted a U.S. company the first license to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights, John Reed of the Financial Times reports. A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights. That geographic location will likely prove controversial. Israel seized the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981. Its administration of the area — which is not recognized by international law — has been mostly peaceful until the Syrian civil war broke out 23 months ago. "This action is mostly political – it’s an attempt to deepen Israeli commitment to the occupied Golan Heights," Israeli political analyst Yaron Ezrahi told FT. "The timing is directly related to the fact that the Syrian government is dealing with violence and chaos and is not free to deal with this problem.”

Earlier this month we reported that Israel is considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles from Golan into Syria to secure the 47-mile border against the threat of Islamic radicals in the area. The move would overtake the UN Disengagement Observer Force Zone that was established in 1973 to end the Yom Kippur War and to provide a buffer zone between the two countries.

The Arab League announced that it would re-table a draft resolution at the UN Security Council on Monday, calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories including the occupied Syrian Golan and the Lebanese Sheba Farms. The Arab League’s draft resolution calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories Israel occupied during the 1967 war. That is, Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan as well as the Israeli occupied, Lebanese Sheba Farms area in southeastern Lebanon.

The Arab League perceives the draft resolution as part of a policy based on the notion that a resolution of the Israel – Palestinian conflict only can be found within the framework of a comprehensive resolution that includes other issues which arose as a consequence to the 1967 war. In December 2014 the UN Security Council rejected a similar, Jordanian-sponsored draft resolution that called for a full Israeli withdrawal within two years. The resolution was endorsed by eight concurrent votes, falling one vote short of the minimum of nine votes. Had the resolution received the necessary nine votes, stated the U.S. State Department, the United States would have made use of its veto right at the Security Council. It were the victors of WWII who “endowed themselves” with the veto right, practically subjugating all other UN member States to the political will of the permanent UN Security Council members.

The rejection of the draft resolution, in December, prompted the President of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to accede to some 20 international treaties, including the Rome Statute. On April 1, Palestine will become a member to the United Nations’s International Criminal Court (ICC). Neither the U.S., Russia, China or Israel have made their citizens subject to prosecution by the ICC.

The administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the recently adopted EU directive on labeling goods from occupied Arab territories by suspending the Israeli – European Union dialog over the Israeli – Palestinian peace process. 

In November the EU adopted a directive that prescribes the labeling of Israeli products and goods from Israeli occupied Arab territories, which are, occupied territories in the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and the Israeli occupied Lebanese Sheba Farm area. The EU stressed that the adoption of the directive was not a hostile act against Israel. Instead, noted the EU, the directive aimed at providing consumers correct information about the origin of goods.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Cabinet plans reportedly to implement additional measures against six specific countries, which are Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta and Sweden. The measures are likely to include the suspension of cooperation with regard to rehabilitation projects in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and projects aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Authority (PA).

he Syrian army has sent additional forces to the city of Quneitra, on Syria's south west border, close to Israel's border, according to Iran's Fars News Agency.A source reportedly told Fars, "A large contingent of the fourth mechanized divisions, comprised of recent graduates from the Syrian Arab Army's Special Forces school in Deir Attiyah, have joined the 90th Brigade's headquarters in Golan Heights, where they will await orders to launch a large-scale offensive."

The soldiers are reportedly being sent to take the city of Jabata al-Khashab, which was under rebel rule for the past two years. Last week the Syrian army engaged in heavy fire against rebel groups in the Quneitra area.The Golan Heights has recently seen a dramatic increase in spillover from battles in Syria, with eight mortar shells striking in the area in the the last month, prompting several Israel Air Force retaliatory strikes on Assad regime artillery.Earlier in September, tensions escalated after the Assad regime’s military fired two surface-to-air missiles at Israeli jets that were conducting a retaliatory strike. The IDF said the jets were far from the threats, and dismissed Syrian claims of a direct hit on Israeli aircraft.

The Israeli Air Force launched five air strikes in Syria, striking targets in Damascus near the International Airport as well as targets near the Lebanese border, report Syrian military and civilian sources. Meanwhile, it appears that the anti-Syrian coalition also counts on a media blackout. The website of the official Syrian news agency SANA is currently, at the writing of this report, inaccessible. Israeli government and military sources would neither confirm or deny that they carried out the airstrikes which violate international law. Unofficial sources report, however, that the airstrikes were launched in attempts to target Russian and Iranian produced anti-aircraft defense systems as well as Hezbollah units which are involved in combating Jabhat al-Nusrah and associated terrorist brigades near the Lebanese – Syrian border.

The General Command of the Syrian Arab Army described the airstrikes as a flagrant attack. The General Command added that the airstrikes caused material damage to targets near Damascus International Airport as well as in the town of Dimas which is located northwest of the capital, on the Damascus – Beirut Highway.

The Israeli airstrikes were not the first which the country launched against targets in Syria as well as in Lebanon. Although the Israeli government adamantly denies that it supports Jabhat al-Nusrah, it is a matter of public record that Israel has maintained a joint operations and intelligence room with the terrorist brigades in the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan since the onset of the war on Syria, that Israel has established field hospitals for injured mercenaries in the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan and that Israel provides other, large–scale support for the internationally outlawed terrorist organization. Shortly after the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) published reports about the Israeli airstrikes the news agency’s website became inaccessible. It is noteworthy that an eventual Israeli involvement or the involvement of agencies of other governments in “taking down” the news agencies website would constitute crimes according to international law amounting to war crimes.

srael has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild. This from a 2010 Genie Energy press release: Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented, “Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable.” “I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative,” Lord Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.” For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law. Japan was succesfully sued by Singapore before the International Court of Justice for exploitation of Singapore’s oil resources during the second world war. The argument has been made in international law that an occupying power is entitled to opeate oil wells which were previously functioning and operated by the sovereign power, in whose position the occupying power now stands. But there is absolutely no disagreement in the authorities and case law that the drilling of new wells – let alone fracking – by an occupying power is illegal.

Israel tried to make the same move twenty years ago but was forced to back down after a strong reaction from the Syrian government, which gained diplomatic support from the United States. Israel is now seeking to take advantage of the weakened Syrian state; this move perhaps casts a new light on recent Israeli bombings in Syria. In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.

The Israeli military on Wednesday stormed a camp for displaced Syrians near the boundary line between the 70 percent of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel and the rest of Syria, according to Syrian activists. The al-Shahaar refugee camp is located near Jabata al-Khashab, a Syrian town in the Quneitra province. The area is mostly controlled by Syrian opposition forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “This camp includes a large number of civilians fleeing the fighting between opposition forces and the regime, and who were forced today to go to Jabata al-Khashab in search of refuge after the Israeli army’s raid,” Abu Hamza al-Jowlani, a media activist, told al-Araby al-Jadeed in an Arabic-language report. Jabata al-Khashab, a nearby town, is located within the boundary lines of the United Nations-administered “buffer zone” between the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan and the rest of the area.

After instructing the camp’s residents to leave, the Israeli army also destroyed tents, according to Syria Mubasher, a Syrian opposition-affiliated news site.  “Israeli army soldiers entered the al-Shahaar camp accompanied by several armored vehicles,” Syria Mubasher reported in Arabic, citing witnesses. “After ordering [the residents] to evacuate, [the Israelis] took and destroyed the tents with no people in them, and returned to the other side of the boundary line,” the report stated. Although Israel claims that it is a neutral bystander in the Syrian civil war, which began as a popular uprising against the Assad regime in 2011, it regularly intervenes in Syria.

Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published a video report of immense implications - possibly the first national broadcaster in the West to admit that the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) is supplied not by "black market oil" or "hostage ransoms" but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey's borders via hundreds of trucks a day. The report titled, "'IS' supply channels through Turkey," confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 - that NATO member Turkey has allowed a torrent in supplies, fighters, and weapons to cross its borders unopposed to resupply ISIS positions inside of Syria.

Local residents and merchants interviewed by Germany's DW admitted that commerce with Syria benefiting them had ended since the conflict began and that the supplies trucks carry as they stream across the border originates from "western Turkey." The DW report does not elaborate on what "western Turkey" means, but it most likely refers to Ankara, various ports used by NATO, and of course NATO's Incirlik Air Base. While DW's report claims no one knows who is arranging the shipments, it does reveal that the very torrent of trucks its film crew documented was officially denied by the Turkish government in Ankara. It is a certainty that Turkey is not only aware of this, but directly complicit, as is NATO who has feigned a desire to defeat ISIS but has failed to expose and uproot ISIS' multinational sponsorship and more importantly, has refused to cut its supply lines - an elementary prerequisite of any military strategy. 

SIS supply lines leading from NATO territory should be of no surprise. As reported since as early as 2007, the US and its regional accomplices conspired to use Al Qaeda and other armed extremists in a bid to reorder North Africa and the Middle East. It would be Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" that explicitly stated (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 

The Obama administration has devised an extraordinary legal justification for carrying out bombing attacks inside Syria: that the United States and its Persian Gulf allies have the right to defend Iraq against the Islamic State because the Syrian government is unable to stop the cross-border terror group. “The Syrian regime has shown that it cannot and will not confront these safe havens effectively itself,” said the U.S. letter delivered by Ambassador Samantha Power to United Nations officials. “Accordingly, the United States has initiated necessary and proportionate military actions in Syria in order to eliminate the ongoing ISIL [Islamic State] threat to Iraq, including by protecting Iraqi citizens from further attacks and by enabling Iraqi forces to regain control of Iraq’s borders.”

Yet, beyond the danger to world order if such an expansive theory is embraced by the international community (does anyone remember how World War One got started?), there is the hypocrisy of the U.S. government and many of those same Gulf allies arming, training and funding Syrian rebels for the purpose of preventing the Syrian military from controlling its territory and then citing that lack of control as the rationale to ignore Syria’s sovereignty. In other words, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other enemies of Syria covertly backed the rebels inside Syria and watched as many of them – including thousands of the U.S.-preferred “moderates” – took their newly acquired military skills to al-Qaeda affiliates and other terrorist organizations. Then, the U.S. and its allies have the audacity to point to the existence of those terror groups inside Syria as a rationale for flying bombing raids into Syria.

In 2011, the Obama administration’s “liberal interventionists” threw their weight behind a Sunni-led uprising to oust Assad, who runs a harsh but largely secular government with key support from Alawites, Shiites, Christians and other minorities who feared Sunni extremism. As with Iraq, Syria’s sectarian violence drew in many Sunni extremists, including jihadists associated with al-Qaeda, particularly the Nusra Front but also “al-Qaeda in Iraq” which rebranded itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or simply the Islamic State. Eventually, al-Qaeda leaders rejected the Islamic State because it had become a rival of the Nusra Front and because its brutality was  too graphic even for al-Qaeda. Despite the growing radicalism of Syrian rebels, Official Washington’s influential neocons and the “liberal interventionists” continued the drumbeat for ousting Assad, a position also shared by Israeli leaders who went so far as to indicate they would prefer Damascus to fall to al-Qaeda extremists rather than have Iranian ally Assad retain control. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Israel Sides with Syrian Jihadists.”]

It happened again this week.Citing military sources, Syria’s official news agency, SANA, reported on Wednesday that Israel had launched a ground-to-ground missile attack at 3am against the Mezzeh military air field near Damascus. Other media reports claimed the attack was carried out by the Israeli air force.According to the Syrian officials, the strike was a “desperate” effort by Israel to support “terrorist groups” fighting the regime. Hours later, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told a meeting of EU envoys that his country was “trying to prevent the smuggling of sophisticated weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction from Syria to Hezbollah”.

As a matter of policy, Israel neither confirms nor denies reports of such attacks, many of which have occurred in recent years, and they are typically thought to target weapons bound for the Shia group – but Lieberman’s comments are especially striking because this is the first time WMD has been mentioned.If indeed Israel attacked the airport this morning, it would be the third Israeli attack within 10 days after two other reported attacks by the Israeli Air Force in the last week of November.The first strike hit the Syrian side of the Golan Heights on 28 November, near the border between the two countries, and targeted an abandoned UN peacekeeping facility used by the Islamic State (IS).It followed an attack on an Israeli troops by the Syrian rebel group Khalid Ibn al-Walid Brigade, formerly known as the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, affiliated with IS.Two days later, the second strike hit the outskirts of Damascus in an attack that was again widely thought to have targeted a shipment of sophisticated weapons headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon.So it would seem that, as far as Israeli security interests are concerned, it’s business as usual – except it’s not. It’s all an illusion.

In addition to the strike this morning and the two strikes in November, the Israeli Air Force have attacked weapons convoys from Syria to Hezbollah twice in the past 11 months.

Exclusive: A problem with President Obama’s plan to expand the war against ISIS into Syria was always the risk that Syrian air defenses might fire on U.S. warplanes, but now a source says Syria’s President Assad has quietly agreed to permit strikes in some parts of Syria, reports Robert Parry.

The Obama administration, working through the Russian government, has secured an agreement from the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad to permit U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State targets in parts of Syria, according to a source briefed on the secret arrangements. The reported agreement would clear away one of the chief obstacles to President Barack Obama’s plan to authorize U.S. warplanes to cross into Syria to attack Islamic State forces – the concern that entering Syrian territory might prompt anti-aircraft fire from the Syrian government’s missile batteries.

In essence, that appears to be what is happening behind the scenes in Syria despite the hostility between the Obama administration and the Assad government. Obama has called for the removal of Assad but the two leaders find themselves on the same side in the fight against the Islamic State terrorists who have battled Assad’s forces while also attacking the U.S.-supported Iraqi government and beheading two American journalists.

After Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprising victory in Israel’s national elections in March, he took until the last possible minute to complete the process of forming the government for his fourth term as Israel’s prime minister. For all the time he invested, despite making it just under the wire, Netanyahu ended up with a fragile, ultra-right-wing coalition and more work ahead of him to bring in at least one more party. The government Netanyahu presented to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was a bare majority of 61 seats out of the 120-seat Knesset. There are no fig leafs in this coalition, no Tzipi Livni or Ehud Barak for Netanyahu to send to talk fruitlessly with the Palestinians. One might think this would make the coalition more stable, since it consists entirely of the right wing. In this, one would be wrong.

Netanyahu is, in fact, desperate to add another party to the coalition because there is so much tension in the current majority, most visibly between Netanyahu’s Likud party and Naftali Bennett’s HaBayit HaYehudi. Likud leaders, including Netanyahu, feel that Bennett essentially held the coalition hostage to his demands. They are quite right about that, but the gambit paid off handsomely for Bennett. HaBayit HaYehudi holds a mere eight seats in the Knesset. Yet Bennett and his party will get four ministries, the deputy defense minister post, as well as the chairs of two key Knesset committees dealing with Israel’s legal system. That is what you get when you play hardball with Netanyahu, a man who likes to talk tough but who is a political creature first and foremost and quickly backs off from a high-stakes fight he is not sure he can win. As things stand, this coalition might not last the year. That is why, after Avigdor Lieberman quit his post as foreign minister and took his greatly diminished party into the opposition, Netanyahu left the post open by keeping that portfolio for himself. In reality, Netanyahu has been the foreign minister all along, so it is not an added burden for him.

On the day that Netanyahu was supposed to present his government, he was still eight seats short of a majority. Luckily for Bennett, that was the exact number of seats he controlled and he let Netanyahu know just how lucky he was. Bennett played a game of chicken with Netanyahu, pushing for more and more power within the government and knowing that Bibi was going to have a hard time saying no to anything. Bennett won, and the spoils were vast. The far-right HaBayit HaYehudi party now controls the ministries of education, agriculture, justice, and diaspora affairs. The position of deputy defense minister will also be theirs. It is even worse than it sounds. With the ministry of agriculture comes control over the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division, which funds the expansion of settlements. Uri Ariel, perhaps the most extreme pro-settler member of the Knesset, will have that portfolio.

An Israeli strike in Syria on Sunday killed the son of a slain top Hezbollah commander and at least five other fighters in a move that could ratchet up tensions with the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement, which recently boasted of rockets that can hit any part of the Jewish state. Hezbollah militants in towns and villages along the border with Israel went on high alert, said an official from the group. In the Shiite-dominated areas of south Lebanon and Beirut, the streets emptied quickly as residents feared an escalation. Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV warned that Israel was "playing with fire that puts the security of the whole Middle East on edge." In a statement issued to the media, Hezbollah identified one of the six slain men as Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah operative assassinated in 2008 in Damascus. Hezbollah blames Israel for the killing and has long vowed to avenge his death. The younger Mughniyeh is one of the most prominent Hezbollah officials to die in Syria since the group entered the fray in 2012, fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's forces against the Sunni-led rebellion. The dead also included another senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Issa, and at least one Iranian national with the group, the statement said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the slain Iranian belonged to the Revolutionary Guards. The group, which obtains its information from a network of activists on the ground, said the Israeli strikes hit two vehicles and a home. It said the fighters were in the area to plan attacks along the Israeli-controlled frontier. Other Hezbollah officials said Sunday's strike targeted two Hezbollah vehicles as fighters were inspecting positions in the Golan Heights, close to the Israeli-controlled frontier, in an area known as Mazrat al-Amal. Israel seized part of the mountainous Golan Heights plateau from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war. "While a group of Hezbollah fighters were on a field inspection of the town, Mazrat al-Amal, ... they faced rocket shelling from helicopters of the Israeli enemy, leading to the martyrdom of a number of holy warrior brothers, whose names will be announced once their honorable families have been informed," the Hezbollah statement said.

What is really behind the deep-state infighting over the U.S. elections and the "wire tapping" of the Trump campaign? Why was the CIA-Neocon axis vehemently lobbying against Trump? What foreign interests and what money is involved in this? Answers to these questions are now emerging. The former director of the CIA under Clinton, James Woolsey, went to the Wall Street Journal and offered some information (likely some true and some false) on the retired General Flynn and the lobbying businesses he was involved in. Woolsey is an arch-neoconservative. He had worked on the transition team of Trump but got fired over "growing tensions over Trump’s vision for intelligence agencies." Flynn is the former National Security Advisor of Trump who later also got fired. Woolsey was a board member of Flynn's former lobbying company FIG. Woolsey claims: In September 2016 he took part in a meeting between Flynn and high level Turkish officials, including the Turkish foreign minister and the energy minister who is the son-in-law of the Turkish president Erdogan. During the meeting, Woolsey claims, a brainstorming took place over how the Turkish cult leader Fethullah Gülen could -probably by illegal means- be removed from the U.S. and handed over to Turkey. Gülen is accused by the Erdogan mafia of initiating a coup attempt against it. The U.S. claims officially that there is no evidence for such an accusation and that Gülen can therefore not be rendered to Turkey. Gülen is an old CIA asset that helped the U.S. deep state to control Turkey.  Erdogan divorced from the Gülen organization after it became useless for his neo-Ottoman project. Here is the WSJ report on the Woolsey claims and a video clip with parts of his WSJ interview. Woolsey also went on CNN where he repeated his WSJ story. Flynn was accused by the anti-Trump campaign to have worked for Russia. He had taken several $10,000 for speeches he gave in Moscow. He also, at times, had argued for better U.S. relations with Russia. But Flynn's pro-Russia stand was probably honest. (Or the bribes involved were just smaller than the ones paid by others.) The money he got on the speaker circus was rather small for a man in his position. Flynn's real corruption was on another issue. After having been fired from the Trump administration, Flynn retroactively filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). His lobbying firm had a contract over $530,000 to work for a company near to the Turkish president Erdogan: In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn’t paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.

This lobbying, not the alleged Flynn-Putin relation, is the real scandal and part of the Trump/CIA/Clinton deep-state in-fighting. The meeting Woolsey described was under the "Turkish" Flynn contract. The Turkish business man, and owner of Inovo, Ekim Alptekin is a member of the Erdogan gang. But hidden at the very end of the WSJ story is the real key to understand the shady network: Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments. It was the Israeli gas company, not the Alptekin outlet, that drove the issue. The Leviatan (and Tamar) gas fields in the Mediterranean along the Israeli coast are a huge energy and profit resource IF the gas from them can be exported to Europe. Several companies are involved in the exploration and all are looking for ways to connect the fields to the European gas network. There are (likely true) rumors that huge bribes have been payed in Israel, Jordan and elsewhere to win exploration contracts and to sell the gas. Negotiations between Israel and Turkey over the pipeline have been on and off. They depend on a positive climate towards Israel in the Turkish government which again depends on the often changing political position of the Erdogan gang.

The picture evolving here (lots of sleuthing and sources) is this: An Israeli company (or whoever is behind it) wants a gas pipeline to Turkey. It hires Flynn and Alptekin to arrange a positive climate for the Leviathan pipeline within the Turkish government. It offers Flynn more than half a million for a little (4-month long) influence work. His job is to create a "friendly atmosphere" for the deal by using his influence in the U.S. to accommodate Erdogan. A major point that is expected from Flynn is to arrange the handover of Gülen, by whatever means, from the U.S. to Erdogan. After accepting the (lobbying) bribe Flynn-the-whore suddenly changes his former anti-Turkish, pro-Russian, pro-Kurdish political position into a pro-Turkish, neutral-Russian and anti-Kurdish one. (His lobbying firm also makes some smaller payments related to the Clinton email-server scandal. This may be related to links between the Clinton family and the Gülen school empire.) He has a meeting with the Turkish government/Erdogan officials part of which is a discussion of a removal of Gülen to Turkey. He pens a pro Erdogan anti-Gülen op-ed which is published on the day of the election and he denigrates the Pentagon plan to work with the Kurds in Syria. The NSA, CIA and the FBI are listening to Flynn's conversations with Turkish and Israeli interests. (For the old and long history of such "wiretapping" of Turkish and Israeli connections and various dirty and criminal deals they revealed read and ask Sibel Edmonds.) The projects which Flynn is involved in, especially removing Gülen, are against the long term interests of the (neoconservative-driven) CIA. Selected tapes of his talks are transcribed and distributed within the anti-Trump campaign. This is the origin of the "wiretapping" of the Trump Tower the U.S. president lamented about. The stuff the CIA dug up about Flynn's dealing was and is used against Trump. Woolsey is caught up in this as he also worked for Flynn's lobbying firm. (His neocon-pro-Zionist history suggests that he is the senior Israeli watchdog over Flynn in all this.) He is now engaged in damage control and is "coming clean" and selectively leaking his anti-Flynn stuff to exculpate himself. (There is probably also some new, better deal involved that will pay off from him.) The Israeli-Turkish pipeline and the related deep-state fight are not the only issue involved in the campaign against Trump. There are also British interests and British intelligence involvement especially with the accusations against Russia of "hacking" of the DNC. If and how these fit in with above has not yet been revealed.

An article in yesterday's New York Times titled "US Pins Hope on Syrian Rebels with Loyalties All Over the Map" highlights the fact that President Obama's recently declared strategy against the Islamic State depends on empowering Syrian rebels to take control once the Islamic State is driven out. This plan leaves the US "dependent on a diverse group riven by infighting, with no shared leadership and with hard-line Islamists as its most effective fighters," the article observes, and proceeds to elaborate on the difficulties of working with the various groups and even knowing what their allegiances are.

The article concludes with a brief focus on one likely prospect: Some rebels appear ready to join the fight against ISIS [Islamic State]. A video posted online this week showed Jamal Maarouf, a rebel commander in northern Syria, addressing a gathering of hundreds of fighters. "God willing, we will fight two states: the state of Bashar al-Assad, the unjust tyrant, and the state of Baghdadi, the aggressor tyrant," he said, referring to the head of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The only problem with this example of a possible US ally in the fight in Syria is that Maarouf has already stated that he has no problem with al Qaeda's Syrian branch, the Al Nusrah Front, and has admitted to sharing weapons with it. And this example of cooperation between "moderate" and radical Islamist groups is not an isolated one; see Threat Matrix report, Desperately seeking moderate Syrian rebels.

As we pointed out here at Threat Matrix back in April, Maarouf told an interviewer from The Independent: "It's clear that I'm not fighting against al-Qa'ida. This is a problem outside of Syria's border, so it's not our problem. I don't have a problem with anyone who fights against the regime inside Syria." Maarouf admits to fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra - one example being the offensive against Isis, whose brutal tactics were deemed too violent even for al-Qa'ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. While Maarouf maintains that their military supplies are too few to share, he cites the battle of Yabroud, against the regime, as an example of how his group shared weapons with Jabhat al-Nusra. "If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They asked us a month ago to send weapons to Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there. When they asked us to do this, we do it."

     The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv (Hebrew) has a splashing headline today warning that Israeli banks are preparing for a “political-economic tsunami”  due to the possibility of an impending European boycott. Unsurprisingly, the banks – Israel’s largest – have been holding meetings amongst themselves to prepare for this tsunami, albeit “quietly and under the radar”. According to Ma’ariv there is “increasing evidence in recent weeks” that the European Union is considering recommendations published in a policy paper last month by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Heavily reported at the time (our coverage here), ECFR’s policy paper warned that transactions between European states and Israeli financial institutions are obligated to adhere to EU policies based on international law when providing loans and financing to Israeli businesses, institutions and individuals in transaction with the illegal Israeli settlements enterprise. An unnamed senior banking official told Ma’ariv, “Beneath the surface this is a mega-event” and if this should happen the economic implications on the banks will have a “massive” impact on the Israeli economy.

This is same tsunami we’ve been hearing about for years now. The timing of the article is somewhat intriguing given there was no information provided indicating what this “increasing evidence” is. But there was this rather curious tickler (google translate): Further deterioration in relations between Israel and the United States downplays the chances that the Americans will try to curb this European action. Maybe the opposite is true. According to various diplomatic sources, the Americans have actually released the reins on Europe and are encouraging Europe to intensify its operations against the continuation of Israel’s settlement policy in the territories. Do tell. One wonders if an increase in pressure might be in relation to Israeli influence over looming U.S. congressional legislation seeking to tank the P5+1 deal with Iran over their nuclear program.

Quoting officials in the Israeli banking system, this is a national issue; there are no banks in Israel not involved in the settlements and there’s “no trick that can solve this affair”: