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On July 24, the Syrian military faced the expected Israeli military actions resulting from Tel Aviv’s displeasure with the fact that its long-time supported militant-held buffer zone east of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights is crumbling.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) employed two Patirot air defense missiles to shoot down a Syrian Su-22 warplane involved in the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) operation against ISIS in the area. One pilot, Colonel Umran Mare, died in the incident.
Israel claimed that the warplane entered about 1 mile into its airspace, meaning the occupied Golans, and was shot down after a few warnings. The Syrian side said that this once again shows Israeli support for terrorist groups operating in Syria.
Despite this incident, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies continued their advance against ISIS capturing over 10 new localities, including Khirbat Khasfayn, Ayn Zabida and Bakkar. On July 25, the advance continued in the direction of Saydah and Aun Thakar.
Meanwhile, Syrian and Russian forces are working to secure the areas liberated from militants across the country.
On July 24, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that units of the International Mine Action Centre of the Russian Armed Forces have demined more than 6500 hectares including 17,000 buildings and neutralized 105,000 explosive devices. Shoigu added that Russian experts had trained 1245 Syrian sappers that have cleared 2,000 hectares and neutralized 3,850 explosive devices.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed up by the US-led coalition, have captured the Sijan oil fields and many nearby points in the northeastern part of Syria from ISIS. According to pro-Kurdish sources, the US-backed group has fully cleared southern al-Hasakah from ISIS and entered northern Deir Ezzor advancing along the border with Iraq.
In the coming weeks, the SDF will likely continue its advance along the border aiming to capture the oil fields area north of the government-held town of al-Bukamal. ISIS has little chance of stopping the US-backed SDF advance there. According to experts, by the end of August, the town of Hajin and nearby points in the Euphrates Valley may become the only points of real ISIS resistance, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.
Here is an article that looks at the massive level of foreign and military aid that the United States supplies to Israel:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/04/aid-to-israel-washington-pastime.html
The pro-Israel lobby has been very successful at getting Washington to see things its way, helping to keep the Middle East out of balance.
It is beyond comprehension how a Jet Fighter Pilot, witnessing Syria War for 8 Years, wiped off his memory the Russian Pilots Downed and killed by Turks and ISIS?
If he neglected, and ignored the fact, that from the moment taking Off, every millisecond he was monitored by NATO and company, and was in crosshair of Patriot missiles ready to fire, while he would be in the range, then he played with fire and Got Burned.
If Syria and supporters can not deal with an area 20km by 20km, then they can not protect themselves from any intervention.
Use long range artillery and drones, instead planes bombing from 15000 feet.
If you forget about Man Pads, then go below 15000 feet.
“Russia protested to Israel after the Israeli military shot down a Syrian plane.”
Israel Army: Following reports regarding sirens in the Golan Regional Council, a projectile launch was identified from Syria at Israeli territory. It appears to have been errant fire from the internal fighting in Syria.
https://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2018/25-july-israel-army-following-reports-regarding-sirens-in
Sounds like a game, a game between Orcas with a Sea Lion Pup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0qMT2YBIcg
“If Syria and supporters can not deal with an area 20km by 20km, then they can not protect themselves from any intervention.”
Syrias “supporters” could quite easily deal with the situation but they don’t want to – they have a deal with Israel. Here’s what the Russian Ambassador to Israel had to say https://twitter.com/israel_mid_ru/status/1020297330166325249
“Russia 🇷🇺 in Israel Verified account @israel_mid_ru Jul 20
Amb.#Viktorov to Rossiya 24 TV Channel: #Russia and #Israel reached understanding of how #Syria territories, adjacent to Israel, will look like for Israel. There are specific agreements. Such negotiations are held to mutual satisfaction of parties”
Wonder if their was a wider message being sent by Israel…and if Russia has communicated anything to Israel.
MOSCOW, July 25./TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov have ended unannounced visits to Israel, Germany and France, a military-diplomatic source confirmed to TASS on Wednesday.
Russian diplomats seeking to step up global efforts to ensure return of refugees to Syria
“The trip has ended. They have returned [to Moscow],” the source said.
Lavrov and Gerasimov had been on a foreign tour since Monday. At a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in West Jerusalem on July 23, they looked into the tasks of completing the anti-terrorist operation in Syria’s south.
On July 24, they visited Berlin to discuss with German Chancellor Angela Merkel conditions for the return of refugees to Syria, as well as activity of the Normandy Format. On the same day, Lavrov and Gerasimov met in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss Syria and Ukraine.
More:
http://tass.com/politics/1014822
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https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-french-aid/after-denial-u-n-says-now-ready-to-help-deliver-french-aid-in-syria-idUKKBN1KE26O
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https://syrianperspective.com/2018/07/90-of-derah-liberated-hundreds-of-foreign-spec-ops-officers-smuggled-to-jordan-zionist-attack-on-misyaf-base-flops.html
Report posted 23rd July
‘Evacuation of White Helmets Shows That It is Western Product’ – Military Expert
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201807261066669456-white-helmets-western-product/
“During the Syrian conflict, the activists of the White Helmets have been involved in “the most odious provocations” and their evacuation reveals their true nature and hypocrisy, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.
A military expert, former Lebanese Army general Amin Hteit in an interview with Sputnik confirmed the Russian foreign ministry’s statements, saying that, “the evacuation of this group clearly shows that this is a Western product in the full sense of the word.”
According to Hteit, the White Helmets carried out the task of creating a given information background to justify any “aggression” by the United States, France and Britain against Syria.
“What we are seeing now is how the creator has rescued its creation,” Hteit said.
“I say so, because there is some evidence for this. First of all, the group was created by the United Kingdom with US support; secondly, their training took place in the military camps of Israel, and then they were sent into Syria; thirdly, their alleged documentary reports were filmed at the behest of British and American intelligence. They were supporting the ongoing operations against Syria via their information campaign,” the retired general told Sputnik.
In an interview with Sputnik, an expert from the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Vladimir Fitin, said that the videos made by the White Helmets were created on the orders and with the money of the British and US intelligence services.
“Now they are being urgently taken out of Syria so that they do not fall into the hands of the rapidly advancing Syrian army,” Fitin said.
He went on by saying that while only a part of the members of the White Helmets were removed, the rest continue to work in the terrorist-controlled territories.
“It is quite possible that they will release some provocative new video,” the expert said.”
See also:
White Helmets Evacuation From Syria Reveals Organization’s True Nature – Moscow
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201807231066622459-white-helmets-evacuation-syria-russia/
“It is well known that the White Helmets has been involved in the most odious provocations during the Syrian conflict. It was carrying out activities only on the territories controlled by Islamic radicals. It was preparing blatant fakes, which were then used as a pretext for making accusations against the Syrian authorities,” the ministry said in a commentary.
“It is symbolic that the White Helmets activists have opted to flee Syria with foreign support thus revealing their true nature and exposing their hypocrisy to the whole world,” it added.
The foreign ministry also stressed that the United States had done nothing to separate Syria’s so-called moderate opposition forces from terrorist groups. “Presently, Syrian forces with support of Russia are restoring law and order in southwestern Syria creating conditions for restoring a peaceful life,” the ministry added.”
White Helmets coming ‘home’: West & Israel provide ‘exceptional’ rescue strategy for NATO’s ghosts
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/434350-white-helmets-evacuation-syria/
“History appears to repeat itself as Israel conducts an “exceptional” rescue of extremist militants and their White Helmet “mannequins” from southern Syria – at the urgent request of NATO member states.
The military alliance’s member states just conducted a novel version of Operation Paperclip in Southern Syria but, instead of resettling Nazi war criminals to develop a weapon’s program in the US, they will resettle Al Qaeda militants and their auxiliaries. Indeed, the latter’s role has been to corroborate alleged tales of chemical weapons use by Syria – to justify the intervention of the US coalition, both by proxy and directly, against a sovereign nation.
Israel, the nation that thinks nothing of shooting Razan Al Najjar, a Palestinian medic, in the back, was filmed offering tea and water to the criminal factions and UK, US intelligence assets on the air-conditioned buses that transported them to safety in Israel, and then Jordan. The latter has, so far, received more than 400 of these celebrated “humanitarians.” Their exploits inside Syria dishonor the term for all authentic Syrian Civil Defence and paramedic volunteer organizations who did not jump ship, leaving civilians to perish at the border while they were given priority in Israeli “lifeboats.”
This is not the first time that the White Helmets, and the armed groups for which they provide cover, have received “exceptional” protection from their handlers and paymasters in the West.
Special requests for their priority extraction from East Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta were submitted by UN agencies during the final battles to liberate these two areas occupied by Western and Gulf state-backed extremist groups, including Al-Nusra Front.
On the March 16, 2018, the permanent Syrian representative at the UN, Dr Bashar Al Jaafari told the UN Security Council: “The biggest scandal is that a UN agency operating in Damascus demanded the evacuation of 76 members of White Helmets from Eastern Ghouta, while paying no attention to the lives of thousands of civilians.”
Mayday Rescue is another alleged NGO, based in the Netherlands and funded directly by the UK FCO and the Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF). Mayday Rescue was established by ex-MI5 founder of the White Helmets, James Le Mesurier, in 2014, one year after he set the White Helmets wheels in motion. MR was created as a convenient interface between the British government and its clandestine propaganda construct to enable the funnelling of funds to the White Helmets. Hardly an independent check and balance of the figures provided by the White Helmets, who issue those stats from inside Al Qaeda headquarters.
Israel does not offer “exceptional” assistance to its enemies. The White Helmets are the “friends” of Israel, as are the militant thugs and extremist murderers who escaped under the White Helmets’ cloak of invisibility.
The White Helmets have demonstrated their violent sectarian nature on many occasions, perhaps most notably calling for the “extermination” of the Syrian Shia Muslim communities of Kafarya and Foua in the Idlib countryside during the Al-Nusra Front-Ahrar al Sham siege which started in March 2015.”
White Helmets are terrorists, can choose surrender or death – Assad
https://www.rt.com/news/434368-white-helmets-surrender-death-assad/
“The fate of White Helmets will be the same as any other terrorist. They have two choices: to lay down their arms and use the amnesty we have offered over the last four or five years, or be killed like the other terrorists,” Assad said.
The Syrian president maintained there is no such legitimate organization as White Helmets.
“It’s a mask, a mask for Al-Nusra (an Al-Qaeda affiliate),” he said. “You have videos and photos of this group’s members holding swords and celebrating the death of Syrian soldiers.”
“What more evidence do you need that they are not a humanitarian organization, but a mask used by Al-Qaeda?” Assad said.
“Our goal now is Idlib, but not only Idlib,” he said. “There are territories in the east of Syria controlled by various groups. A little bit is held by IS, and some by the Al-Nusra Front and other militant formations.”
Last month, the Syrian president said that he was also seeking to negotiate reintegration with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed umbrella group made up mostly of Kurdish militias fighting IS in the north-eastern part of Syria.
“We all don’t trust the Americans, [so] the one option is to live with each other as Syrians,” Assad told RT in June. Every attempt would be made to negotiate with the SDF, but if negotiations fail, “the Syrian army will be forced to liberate areas occupied by the SDF, with the Americans or without the Americans.”
Assad: White Helmets Who Refuse to Lay Down Arms to Be Liquidated as Terrorists
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201807261066715803-assad-white-helmets-destroyed/
“Assad said that the leaders of the group had likely already fled Syria, with the remainder staying behind under the guise of civilians and hiding in militant-controlled Idlib, which he said was home to “tens of thousands of terrorists.”
“They have fled Syria, but really did not flee — they were evacuated by Israel, Jordan and the Western powers,” Assad said.
Also on Thursday, Assad compared the current situation in his country to the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet-Nazi conflict during World War II). Surrounded by relatives of Russian servicemen who died fighting jihadists in Syria, the Syrian leader said the barbarous actions of the Nazis were comparable to those of today’s terrorists. “In school, you’ve read about the Great Patriotic War. In Syria today we are experiencing something similar. When the Nazis attacked [the Soviet Union] they began killing Russians simply because they did not like them, and the Russian heroes were defending not only the Russian people, but the whole world.” Now, Assad said, “both Russian and Syrian heroes are doing the same thing.”
Appealing to Syrians abroad who fled the country during the war, Assad said that he would like to see “every Syrian return,” particularly those who had their own business, which would help in the restoration of the economy. The president admitted that accommodating returnees wouldn’t be an easy task, given the destruction of housing and infrastructure caused by the war.
Russia, Assad said, is a great power, and has a duty to restore a geopolitical equilibrium in world affairs. Part of this responsibility is “a political and military presence in various regions, if this is necessary,” he noted.”
ISIS’ Golan Pocket Decimated by 3/4 in 24 Hours.
SAA Convoys Heading North for Upcoming Lattakia/Idlib Campaign.
“… ISIS followed Israeli downing of the Su-22 in what seems a coordinated effort to let the Syrian Gov’t and its allies to commit large forces to protect the south.
https://ejmagnier.com/2018/07/26/the-isis-suweida-attack-is-a-message-to-its-branch-in-quneitra-and-to-russia-and-damascus/
As the fight in southern Syria is coming to a close, ISIS in Yarmouk took a historical beating today losing 3/4 of the pocket in 24 hrs, news from Damascus are pointing to a decision we have been waiting for a long time, the complete liberation of NE Lattakia, NW of Hama, Idlib and western Aleppo. The Syrian Gov’t and its allies are fully committed to annihilate the wahhabeasts in that area while pursuing reconciliation agreements with many villages and cities. As in Daraa Province, there are hundreds of villages/cities from the mentioned regions above that already waved the desire to reconcile with the Syrian Government through Russian mediation, so we should expect a Daraa 2.0 style of military operation and reconciliation at the same time, an effort to isolate the hardcore wahhabeasts from the ordinary civilians and aim for the most of reconciliation. The big question is whether Turkey will play to protect al Qaeda/TIP/Uzbek hardcore wahhabeasts or play a constructive role in reconciliation ?
Some interesting info shared recently was that Turkey continues to transfer its terrorists from Idlib to Afrin canton, meaning somehow separating turkish backed terrorists for protection in Afrin from the other terrorists that will be allowed to be annihilated.
The events are evolving very fast lately, SDF has sent a high level group to Damascus to discuss some next steps toward actions around reconciliation, some subjects discussed were : Raqqa city, all area in Mabij/Eastern Aleppo province, Tabqa dam, oil fields among others. Though it is too early for anything, it seems a step in the right direction, it is important to note that the Syrian Gov’t is playing hardball due to its stronger current position, time is a Syrian Gov’t ally, have been saying this for over 6 years by now, I am confident President Assad will strike the best deal possible to bring north, NE and Eastern Syria back to Govt control.
Last but not least, several SAA convoys heading north, for the next offensive, so we will see many videos showing the TFs, RGs, Liwa al Quds among many other Syrian groups heading toward Hama, Lattakia, eastern Idlib and Aleppo.
The little info so far shared points to an operation to clear the border with Turkey from Lattakia toward Idlib, no word said on Bab al Hawa border crossing at the moment.
This approach is needed because this is where al Qaeda terrorists (mostly supported by the turkish regime) is located, with very high concentration of TIP and Uzbek terrorists.” (Canthama)
Putin Teasing Israeli Government & IDF.
“if Israel decides to push its army beyond this (1974 disengagement) line, it would be the biggest gift you are offering to Iran and its allies and a valid reason to attack you. I’ll pull my forces out of the south and leave you with your unsuitable ideas”.
“Putin Teasing Israeli Government & IDF.”
Wishful thinking?