Kenapa Israel Sokong Pemberontak Sunni Lawan Pemerintah Syiah Di Syria?

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A tank belonging to the forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is seen in Quneitra's countryside during a battle with Syrian rebels, near the border fence with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Sept. 8, 2014. (photo by REUTERS)

Summary[size=16.7999992370605px]⎙ Print After four years of fighting in Syria, Israel no longer seems neutral, and though the Israeli security establishment won't discuss it with the public, signs actually indicate that Israel has chosen to support the Sunni rebels.
Author Jacky HugiPosted February 26, 2015TranslatorDanny Wool

Why did Israel decide to support Syrian rebels?

Not a soul could help but be outraged by the two recent atrocities that the Islamic State (IS) has unleashed upon the world. The first of these was the immolation of Jordanian fighter pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh on Feb. 3, followed a short time later by the ceremonial execution of 21 Egyptian captives in Libya. This last horror show not only gave IS bonus points for wreaking fear among the general public, but also embedded images in the international community's awareness of a new arena taken over by the group. So far we have seen Syria, Iraq and the Sinai Peninsula, and now there is also Libya. Traces of IS can be found in each of these places, and if not IS per se, then at least its corrupt legacy.

While this terrorism is essentially homegrown, the West cannot be absolved of its contribution to encouraging it. In three out of the four current hotspots, at least one Western country was involved in laying the groundwork for it. The Americans ousted Saddam Hussein in Iraq; France instigated the military operation against Moammar Gadhafi of Libya; and the rebels who aspire to topple the Syrian regime have long enjoyed the steady support of France, Great Britain and the United States.

Thus, this Sunni terrorism benefits from a gradual yet constant process of weakening the regimes of the Middle East, or prompting their collapse — a process to which the West has generously contributed. In such a reality, Jerusalem should calculate its every move with the most extreme caution. In December 2014, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, which maintains peace in the Golan Heights, released an intriguing report on contacts between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Syrian rebels. The report disclosed, if only in part, that the two parties have held dozens of meetings, and that Israel transferred certain unidentified objects to anonymous individuals across the border fence. Furthermore, rebels on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights know that if they are injured in battle, they can receive medical care in Israel. According to official IDF sources, some 1,500 wounded individuals arrived at the border fence over the past two years and then received treatment in Israel. These included innocent women and children, but there were also many men who were injured in battle, or in other words, fighters. Not one of these was a soldier in the Syrian army. And their arrival is coordinated in advance, meaning that someone is informing the Israelis that they are on the way.

What this shows is that after four years of fighting in Syria, Israel apparently is no longer sitting on the fence. These facts indicate that Israel is ostensibly taking a side in the crisis, and between the two sides, it chose to support the Sunni rebels. But who are these rebels, and what do they want? It is hard to tell, because, unfortunately, there is no public discourse in Israel about these contacts, nor is there any discussion about our new partners across the fence.

Anyone who delves into the situation in Syria, if only just a little, will find a confusing jumble of armed factions, including the Free Syrian Army, but also some other more extreme factions that have adopted extremist ideology. First and foremost among these are Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra (the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda). The latter is a deadly group, which has been declared a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations.

While Israeli intelligence sources are likely to attribute the secrecy surrounding their support for these groups to security needs, it is actually a political issue. It should be utterly inconceivable that Israel’s security forces would maintain contact with such fickle militias, not subject to any laws, or that if they did, the Israeli public would know nothing about it. Imagine if the Shin Bet established clandestine relations with Hamas as politicians promoted a monstrous image of the group to the broader public.

Here are a few questions that should be of some interest to Israelis: Why did Israel decide to wade into the sullied waters of the Syrian crisis after a lengthy period of neutrality? What was the basis of the alleged decision to side specifically with the Sunni rebels? Why did Israel prefer to establish contact with a non-state actor, rather than with the capital of a sovereign state? Are Israeli intelligence elements in contact with extremist groups?

The cruelty of Damascus is undisputed. The Syrian regime subjected its people to tyranny for decades. When the battles erupted, the regime massacred mercilessly its citizens, even within densely populated residential neighborhoods.

But as far as Israel is concerned, experience teaches that the Shiite-Alawite camp is led by pragmatic individuals. While they may be motivated by the urge to attack Israel and shed its blood, this is not the result of some bloodthirstiness or messianic religious fervor, as it is with the various Sunni extremist factions. Yes, Damascus is Jerusalem’s traditional enemy, but it also knew how to keep the border quiet for four decades. Even in the numerous instances when Bashar al-Assad was allegedly attacked by the IDF (some of these instances according to foreign news sources), Assad was reluctant to respond, so as not to open up a front with Israel. With the Middle East experiencing a rising tide of fundamentalism, it is better to face a secular rather than a religious enemy.

We should stop with the illusions: the day "after Assad" won't bring about a secular liberal ruling alternative. The extremist organizations are the most dominant factions in Syria nowadays. Any void left in Syria will be seized by them, not the moderate rebels. This is what happened in Iraq and Libya. This is what will happen in any other arena in the region.

Israel has a bitter score to settle with Hezbollah, too, but at least it is a disciplined movement whose word counts for something, and which has a single loyalty. It is a group that can be spoken to (through mediators, of course). Its policies include avoiding attacks on enemy civilians, except in extreme circumstances, or when there is a need to reciprocate in kind. Its fighters do not behead anyone, nor do they set their prisoners on fire. When it wants to attack Syria or Hezbollah, Israel has an address to turn to. The same cannot be said about the Sunni extremist organizations. With them, it’s hard to tell who's pulling the strings from a distance today, and who will be pulling the strings tomorrow. A retaliatory operation against them can sometimes resemble chasing after the ghosts of yesterday. With that in mind, Israel must know the true identity of the horse it is betting on.

In the mid-1980s, the IDF’s Civil Administration in the Gaza Strip promoted Islamic organizations as counterweights to Fatah. What ultimately emerged out of those groups was Hamas, a group that has since devoured Fatah and now constitutes a tangible threat to Israel.

The most horrifying scenario in the Golan Heights would be this: Once the last Syrian troops are driven out of the narrow strip of territory they still control along the Israeli border, the Sunni factions will establish themselves in the region. At that point, some patron will recognize the potential damage that the group can cause Israel and take it under its wing, both financially and ideologically. It will not be long until a hail of mortar fire threatens the Israeli communities of the Golan Heights, God forbid.

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Exclusive: Israel Is Tending to Wounded Syrian Rebels

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Israel is quietly cultivating ties with moderate Syrian rebel groups operating along the country’s U.N.-monitored cease-fire line with Syria, providing medical care and other unidentified supplies to the insurgents while potentially extracting a valuable vein of intelligence on the activities of President Bashar al-Assad’s army as well as extremist opposition forces within Syria.

In the past three months, battle-hardened Syrian rebels have transported scores of wounded Syrians across a cease-fire line that has separated Israel from Syria since 1974, according to a 15-page report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the work of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). Once in Israel, they receive medical treatment in a field clinic before being sent back to Syria, where, presumably, some will return to carry on the fight.

U.N. blue helmets responsible for monitoring the decades-old cease-fire report observing armed opposition groups "transferring 89 wounded persons" from Syrian territory into Israel, where they were received by members of the Israel Defense Forces, according to the report. The IDF returned 21 Syrians to armed opposition members back in Syria, including the bodies of two who died.

"Throughout the reporting period, UNDOF frequently observed armed members of the opposition interacting with the IDF across the cease-fire line," according to the report. "On one occasion UNDOF observed the IDF on the Alpha side [inside Israel] handing over two boxes to armed opposition on the Bravo side [inside Syria]."

U.N. officials worry that rising instability in the cease-fire zone could ultimately threaten the uneasy peace along the Syria-Israel line of separation. Although the cease-fire between Israel and Syria has largely held, Israeli forces on March 18 and 19 fired on Syrian troops, killing two Syrian soldiers and wounding 17 others, marking the "most significant violation" of the truce in its 40-year history. Israel says it fired on the Syrian position in response to the Syrians’ placement of an improvised explosive device that injured four Israeli soldiers, one seriously.

"The ongoing military activities in the area of separation continue to have the potential to heighten tensions between Israel and the Syrian Arab Republic and to jeopardize the cease-fire between the two countries, in addition to heightening the risk to United Nations personnel," Ban wrote. "I call on the government of the Syrian Arab Republic to stop the use of airstrikes, which cause suffering to the civilian population," Ban wrote. "I also once again condemn the horrific atrocities committed by some armed members of the opposition."

The Israeli government has been providing medical assistance to Syria’s wounded for more than a year. In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to a military field hospital in the Golan Heights in a tour aimed at contrasting Israel’s humanitarianism with that of Iran, one of Syria’s military backers, claiming it was arming, financing, and training Syrian forces responsible for killing and wounding Syrian civilians.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the IDF, said the Israeli government has provided medical assistance to more than 1,000 Syrians over the past 14 months. "We give medical aid to people who are in dire need," he said in a telephone interview. "We don’t do any vetting or check where they are from or which group they are fighting for, or whether they are civilians."

Lerner said that Israeli forces have a kind of "gentleman’s agreement" with Syrians across the border to alert Israeli forces that they intend to deliver their wounded. But he said that Israel’s cooperation with Syrians is strictly medical and humanitarian. "The Israeli policy of noninvolvement in Syria is what binds us," he said. "Our primary mission is to defend the border from potential spillover of the civil war into Israel from the Syrian Golan Heights."

Ehud Yaari, an Israeli fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on the Golan Heights, said that Israel is supplying Syrian villages with medicines, heaters, and other humanitarian supplies. The assistance, he said, has benefited civilians and insurgents.

"The wounded are both fighters and civilians but there are not too many civilians left because of the fighting raging there," he said. "Close to 900 Syrians have been treated in Israel, so you should assume the operation is going flawlessly. It would be not wrong to assume there is some sort of coordination going on with the armed rebels on the ground."

The Israeli assistance is only a single piece of a broader international effort, including by the United States, to lend support to so-called local Syrian opposition groups in southern Syria fighting forces loyal to Assad. The United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other governments are coordinating military support out of a joint operations center in Amman, Jordan. In a recent address to cadets at West Point Military Academy, President Obama pledged that the U.S. would step up its help. "I will work with Congress to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and a brutal dictator."

The primary goal of international assistance, according to Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria at the University of Oklahoma, has shifted from toppling the regime to undercutting the influence of extremist jihadist groups, such as the al-Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate, and the powerful Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, whose fighters recently crossed into Iraq and abruptly conquered Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. The West is also trying to create a "buffer zone" that prevents Syria-based extremists from taking up positions along the border with Israel and Jordan.

"They are worried about jihadists on their border and they want to know what’s going on," said Landis. The "quid pro quo," he said, is that if the less radical rebels want guns and other forms of assistance, "they have to cleanse the jihadists from this border zone."

Still, Landis cautioned that the al-Nusra Front is continuing to gain strength in southern Syria. "This is the trouble with the American strategy of helping the moderates," he said. "You can’t see anywhere where it is really working because the moderates are being pushed aside."

Yaari challenges that account, noting that Syria’s local insurgents remain the dominant force along the border; and although the al-Nusra Front has made inroads, its southern-based fighters are mostly drawn from the local community, not recruited from foreign jihadi networks. He also said there is little evidence that the United States is active in the area. "What has happened in northeastern Syria, north of Damascus, has not been repeated in the south," Yaari said, referring to the predominance of extremist jihadists. "You may ask yourself whether Jordanian and Israeli activities have contributed to that. Israel and Jordan would not like al Qaeda to establish itself on their borders."

The U.N. mission was established in 1974 along a narrow strip of the Golan Heights to monitor a truce between Israel and Syria. The once-sleepy mission — comprising 1,251 Fijian, Filipino, Indian, Irish, Nepalese, and Dutch peacekeepers — has regularly taken fire since the Syrian civil war began.

Under the terms that ended the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syrian and Israeli forces are prohibited from operating along a narrow strip of territory known as the separation zone. Since the start of the civil war, Syrian rebel groups have flooded into the area, giving them a safe haven close to Israel. But the Syrian government has contested t
he area for well more than a year, bringing in tanks and other heavy weapons and, recently, carrying out airstrikes in rebel-controlled areas.

"On numerous occasions during periods of fighting between the Syrian armed forces and armed members of the opposition, rounds landed inside or in close proximity to the United Nations positions, at times forcing United Nations personnel to take shelter," according to the report. In April and May, Syrian tank artillery landed just outside a U.N. compound, in one case striking the perimeter fence. Syrian authorities are unwilling to clear the delivery of high-tech equipment designed to neutralize improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The equipment, which could improve safety for blue helmets, is in Beirut awaiting customs clearance.

The United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel reportedly channeled their assistance to local Syrian rebel groups — including the newly constitutedSouthern Front — viewing them as less radical than the al-Nusra Front or ISIS. But U.N. officials say that some of the groups have fired on U.N. peacekeepers and even laid IEDs near roads traveled by U.N. peacekeepers. One U.N. official said militants who fired on Irish peacekeepers said they thought the blue helmets were actually Russian fighters supporting Assad’s government, even though there are no Russian peacekeepers in the mission. Scholar Edmund Burke wrote in the Irish Times that the attacks were more extensive. The report claims that Western-backed groups, including the Yarmouk Brigade, are coordinating military attacks with the al-Nusra Front, underscoring the degree to which so-called "moderates" and "extremists" can be indistinguishable on the battlefield.

The U.N. blue helmets have been harassed by the rebels before. In March 2013, a local rebel group, the Martyrs of Yarmouk Brigade,kidnapped 21 peacekeepers, claiming that they were aiding the Syrian government. "It remains critical that countries with influence continue to strongly convey to the armed opposition groups in the UNDOF area of operation the need to halt all activities that endanger U.N. peacekeepers on the ground, including firing at peacekeepers," the report states.

Some 400 armed opposition fighters, backed by artillery fire from three tanks, seized a Syrian military outpost atop a hill at Tal al-Garbi, planting four black flags and raising concern that extremist groups are moving into the zone.

More than two weeks later, opposition fighters captured two other strategically important hilltop military outposts in Tal al-Jabiya and Tal al-Sharqi.

"In the afternoon of 24 April, two members of the armed opposition displayed the severed head of a presumed Syrian armed forces officer as they passed" a U.N. outpost, according to the report. By the end of April, U.N. observers "detected the flying of black flags believed to be associated with militant groups scattered throughout the central and southern part of the area of separation, including three Syrian armed forces positions captured by the armed members of the opposition."

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'US, Israel supporting Syrian rebels from Turkey'

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Syrian envoy claims Israel, US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar intelligence running military operation centers in Turkey; used to oversee rebels' battles.

Syrian rebel with captured tank 370. (photo credit:REUTERS)

UNITED NATIONS - Syria has accused Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of running military operation centers in Turkey to support the rebels by overseeing battles in Syria's 17-month conflict.

In a letter to the UN Security Council released on Friday, Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari also again blamed Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia of "harboring, funding and arming the armed terrorist groups."

"Turkey has established within its territory military operations centers that are run by the intelligence services of Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar," Ja'afari wrote in the letter dated Aug. 2.

"Those centers are being used to oversee battles that are being waged by the terrorists against Syrian citizens in Aleppo and other Syrian cities and the massacres the terrorists are perpetrating after entering Syria in large numbers," he said.

US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing measures to help the rebels and US officials say Washington is collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to help direct vital military and communications support to rebels.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces have killed more than 15,000 people since a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters began in March 2011, some Western leaders say. Damascus says rebels have killed several thousand of its security forces.

Aleppo, which is Syria's largest city and economic hub, has been battered for days by government artillery, but rebels promised on Friday they will hit back after losing ground as residents fled during a lull in fighting.

"Those shedding tears over what is occurring in Aleppo and demanding that the Security Council should be convened are the very same parties that caused the tragedy through their support of terrorism and arming of terrorist groups," Ja'afari said.

He said the United States, France, Britain and Turkey were leading a campaign "to alter the balance in the region and force its countries to comply with the hegemonic policies and bend to the will of those Western states."

Ja'afari called on the UN Security Council to pressure those countries to stop supporting, arming and funding the rebels and facilitating their operations.

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dulu ada ummah kata israel dan syiah ni nak perangai sunni.......