Israel has agreed to allow limited access by Syrian forces into the Sweida area of southern Syria for the next two days, an Israeli official said on Friday, after days of bloodshed in the predominantly Druze area that has killed over 300 people.
Sweida province has been engulfed by nearly a week of violence triggered by clashes between Bedouin fighters and factions from the Druze, a minority with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
Damascus earlier this week dispatched government troops to quell the fighting, but they were accused of carrying out widespread violations against the Druze and were hit by Israeli strikes before withdrawing under a truce agreed on Wednesday.
Israel had repeatedly said it would not allow Syrian troops to deploy to the country's south, but on Friday it said it would grant them a brief window to end renewed clashes there.
"In light of the ongoing instability in southwest Syria, Israel has agreed to allow limited entry of the (Syrian) internal security forces into Sweida district for the next 48 hours," the official, who declined to be named, told reporters.
Describing Syria's new rulers as barely disguised jihadists, Israel has vowed to shield the area's Druze community from attack, encouraged by calls from Israel's own Druze minority.
It carried out new strikes on Sweida province overnight.
Reuters reporters saw a convoy of units from Syria's interior ministry stopped on a road in Daraa province, which lies directly east of Sweida. A security source told Reuters that forces were awaiting a final green light to enter Sweida.
But thousands of Bedouin fighters were still streaming into Sweida on Friday, the Reuters reporters said, prompting fears among residents that violence would continue unabated.
Posted by JaceFlores
4 Comments
I’m not one to post articles at all (I’m a DT creature through and through) but I haven’t seen this posted yet and I think it needs to be because it highlights the absurdity of Israeli policy in Syria that I have had countless back and forths about in the past couple days.
The fact is an open ended goalless air campaign by Israel was bound to fail because it did nothing to resolve the root issues for why this violence began in the first place. It did nothing to resolve Druze-Bedouin issues, it did nothing to resolve inter-Druze issues, and it did nothing to resolve Druze-government issues. So when the government pulled out it unsurprisingly let these issues fester and gain even more steam, leading to this comical switch in tone.
The fact of the matter is Syria needs a centralized authority to stop violence across the country, and that includes Suweida. The two options are either Al-Sharaa and his forces or an Israeli occupation of southern Syria. It’s pick your poison time, and it seems even Israel leans towards one option over the other
!ping MIDDLEEAST&ISRAEL
A lot of you probably already saw Gains’ post about this in the DT but here’s a nice article that summarizes the whole situation
Israel is the concept of territorial integrity father
2nd 5 year plan after initial rebuilding should be getting ideally patriot batteries or at least HQ-19s so as to prevent this fuckery from happening again
Does Netanyahu genuinely believe that Israel can just keep acting like this forever or does he have some endpoint in sight with all of this? This seems completely unhinged from the outside looking in