- Society
- 19 July 2017
Russian
army units are preparing to move into the Syrian town of Quneitra in
the coming days and take up positions opposite the Syrian-Israeli Golan
border, DEBKAfile reports exclusively from military sources. Their
function is to police the second zone of southwestern Syria designated
for ceasefire by Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin when they
met in Hamburg on July 7.
Quneitra is just 5km from Israel’s border and the line of IDF positions defending it.
Israel
has notified Washington and Moscow that it is flatly opposed to the
presence of a Russian unit on its border. However, the US and Russian
officers coordinating the ceasefire’s implementation agreed to recommend
going forward with the Russian deployment. The White House and the
Kremlin gave the officers’ recommendation the green light, virtually
imposing it on Israel against its will.
Their
argument is that the first ceasefire zone that was established last
week in the Daraa front on the Jordanian border will quickly break down
if it is not shored up by a second zone at Quneitra.
But the two zones differ in major respects, our military and intelligence sources emphasize.
The
understandings drawn up for Daraa between the US, Russia and Jordan,
included a clause explicitly providing for the withdrawal of Iranian and
pro-Iranian forces, including Hizballah, to a point 40km west or north
of the demilitarized town.
This clause never stood up for
one moment. As DEBKAfile first disclosed on July 16, even after Russian
and Chechen troops moved into Daraa on Sunday, Syrian and Iranian forces
did move out, but
an elite Hizballah unit remained. The
US, Russia and Jordan decided collectively to let this breach of the
ceasefire deal go without response and tried to keep it dark.
While
acting to procure Jordan’s acceptance for the new format, the two
powers refrained from turning to Jerusalem. They knew they would be
greeted with a flat rejection, because of an earlier lapse: The clause
providing for a 40km withdrawal of Iranian and pro-Iranian troops from
Daraa was left out of the deal for Quneitra - heedless of urgent Israeli
demands for its inclusion.
The
absence of any Trump-Putin commitment on this score leaves Israel fully
exposed to the presence of Iranian and Hizballah forces within mortar
range of its Golan border in an area supervised by their ally, the
Russian military.
It was this danger that galvanized Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into broadcasting Israel’s total opposition
to the Trump-Putin ceasefire for southwestern Syria during his visit
to Paris on Monday, July 17, after his talks with President Emmanuel
Macron.
In
an apparent bid to calm Israel’s concerns, Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov made an usual statement for a Russian diplomat: "I can
guarantee that we have done everything and the US side has done
everything to ensure that Israel's security interests within this
framework are fully taken into account," he said later on Monday.
Careful
perusal of this comment revealed to our sources that it was made in the
context of a previous ceasefire accord for the Russians had made Turkey
and Iran “co-sponsors.” Instead of reassurance, his comment was
taken in Israel as a bid to ascertain that the arrival of Russian troops
in Quneitra over Israel’s strenuous objections would go smoothly.
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