Gazans celebrate "victory" over Israel following last year’s war. Now, desperate to maintain the calm in Gaza, Israel has been conducting intermittent, off-the-record indirect talks with Hamas, which it describes as a “terror organisation”. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jun 16 2015 (IPS)

Israel’s deadly game of divide and conquer against its enemies could be coming home to roost with a vengeance, especially as the Islamic State (ISIS) grows in strength in neighbouring countries and moves closer to Israel’s borders.

Desperate to maintain the calm in Gaza, Israel has been conducting intermittent, off-the-record indirect talks with Hamas through U.N., European and Qatar intermediaries despite vowing to never negotiate with Hamas which it describes as a “terror organisation”.

Israel helped promote the establishment of Hamas in the late 1980s in a bid to thwart the popularity of the Palestinian Authority-affiliated Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) which was then also regarded as a “terrorist organisation” and the most powerful and popular Palestinian political movement.

But Israel’s indirect support of ISIS-affiliated Syrian opposition groups could be an even bigger gamble.“Despite ISIS ultimately being a threat to Israel, it currently fits in with Israel’s strategy of weakening the military capabilities of Iran and Syria, both enemies of ISIS, the same way a previously powerful Iraqi military had threatened Israel”

As the Omar Brigades calculated, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) responded by attacking Hamas military targets in the coastal territory because they hold the Gaza leadership responsible for any attacks on Israel.

“Israelis, we learn, are essentially being used as pawns in a deadly game of chicken between Hamas and these Salafist rivals,” said Alison Kaplan Sommer, a columnist with the Israeli daily Haaretz.

“The Salafists refuse to abide by the informal truce that has kept the tense quiet between Hamas and Israel since the Gaza war – and Hamas is not religious and fundamentalist enough for their taste.

“Firing rockets into Israel serves a dual purpose for them. It makes a statement that they are true jihadists, unlike the Hamas sell-outs who abide by truces – and it also happens to be an excellent way for them to indirectly strike back at their Hamas oppressors. Why, after all, go to the trouble of attacking Hamas when you can so easily get Israel to do it for you?”

Israel’s dual policy of covertly supporting ISIS-affiliated Jihadists in Syria in a bid to weaken Israel’s arch-enemy Syria has taken several forms.

U.N. observers in the Golan Heights have released reports detailing cooperation between Israel and Syrian opposition figures including regular contacts between IDF soldiers and Syrian rebels.

Israel is also regularly admitting wounded Syrian opposition fighters to Israeli hospitals and it is not based on humanitarian considerations.

Israel finally responded by saying the wounded were civilians reaching the border by their own accords but later conceded it was coordinating with armed opposition groups.

“Israel initially had maintained that it was treating only civilians. However, reports claimed that members of Israel’s Druze minority protested the hospitalisation of wounded Syrian fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front in Israel,” reported the Global Research Centre for Research on Globalisation.

The last report distributed to U.N. Security Council members in December described two U.N. representatives witnessing Israeli soldiers opening a border gate and letting two unwounded people exit Israel into the Golan Heights.

The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations also complained of widespread cooperation between Israel and Syrian rebels, not only for treatment of the wounded but also other aid.

U.N. observers remarked in a report distributed last year that they identified IDF soldiers on the Israeli side handing over two boxes to armed Syrian opposition members on the Syrian side.

Despite ISIS ultimately being a threat to Israel, it currently fits in with Israel’s strategy of weakening the military capabilities of Iran and Syria, both enemies of ISIS, the same way a previously powerful Iraqi military had threatened Israel.

When the United States began operations against ISIS, a senior Israeli high command seemed reluctant to give any support and called the move a mistake.

It was easier to deal with terrorism in its early stages [ISIS] than to face an Iranian threat and the Hezbollah, he said. “I believe the West intervened too early and not necessarily in the right direction,” he told Haaretz anonymously.

“Israel is pursuing a policy that in the long term will ultimately be self-defeating. In a bid to divide Syria, Israel is supporting ISIS but this will backfire in that ISIS is growing in strength and destroying societies in its path and it will eventually turn its sights on Israel,” Professor Samir Awad from Birzeit University, near Ramallah, told IPS.

It is possible that ISIS could topple future regimes that Israel is hoping for support from, including Syrian rebels who hinted at a peace with Israel once Syrian President Bashar Assad is toppled.

Jacky Hugi, the Arab affairs analyst for Israeli army radio Galie-Zahal who confirmed on the Al Monitor website that Israel was taking the Syrian rebels side in the fighting, had a warning.

“We should stop with the illusions – the day ‘after Assad’ won’t bring about a secular liberal ruling alternative. The extremist organisations are the most dominant factions in Syria nowadays,” said Hugi. “Any void left in Syria will be seized by them, not the moderate rebels.”

According to political analyst Benedetta Berti of Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies, Israel is closely monitoring its northern front, specifically the Golan Heights.

“Israel believes that there is no current threat from the rebels as they are too busy with the Syrian war,” Berti told IPS. “However, if we extend the time frame, then the situation could change when Syrian rebels may want to attack Israel from the northern borders.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Johan Galtung
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 2014 (IPS)

More senseless bombing of Muslims, more defeats for the United States-West, more ISIS-type movements, more West-Islam polarisation. Any way out?

“ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq-Syria] Appeals to a Longing for the Caliphate”, writes Farhang Jahanpour in an IPS column. For the Ottoman Caliphate with the Sultan as Caliph – the Shadow of God on Earth – after the 1516-17 victories all over until the collapse of both Empire and Caliphate in 1922, at the hands of the allies England-France-Russia.

Johan Galtung

Imagine the collapse of the Vatican, not Catholic Christianity, at the hands of somebody, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, meaning Anglo-Americans or Russians, or Muslims. A centre in this world for the transition to the next, headed by a Pope, an emanation of God in Heaven. Imagine it gone.

And imagine that they who had brought about the collapse had a tendency to bomb, invade,  conquer, dominate Catholic countries, one after the other, like after the two [George] Bush wars in Afghanistan-Iraq, five Obama wars in Pakistan-Yemen-Somalia-Libya-Syria and “special operations”.

Would we not predict a longing for the Vatican, and an extreme hatred of the perpetrators? Fortunately, it did not happen.

But it happened in the Middle East, leaving a trauma fuelled by killing hundreds of thousands. The Sykes-Picot_Agreement between Britain and France of 16 May 1916 led to the collapse, with their four well-known colonies, the less known promise of Istanbul to Russia, and the 1917 Balfour Declaration offering parts of Arab lands as “national home for the Jewish people”. Jahanpour cites Winston Churchill as “selling one piece of real estate, not theirs, to two peoples at the same time”.“Imagine the collapse of the Vatican, not Catholic Christianity, at the hands of somebody, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, meaning Anglo-Americans or Russians, or Muslims. A centre in this world for the transition to the next, headed by a Pope, an emanation of God in Heaven. Imagine it gone”

The Middle East colonies fought the West through military coups for independence; Turkish leader Kemal Atatürk was a model. The second liberation is militant Islam-Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algiers and so on against secular military dictatorships.

The West prefers military order against history.

The longing cannot be stopped. ISIS is only one expression, and exceedingly brutal. But, damage and destruction by U.S. President Barack Obama and allies will be followed by a dozen ISIS from 1.6 billion Muslims in 57 countries.

A little military politicking today, some “training” here, fighting there, bombing all over, are only ripples on a groundswell. This will end with a Sunni caliphate sooner or later. And, the lost caliphate they are longing for had no Israel, only a “national home”. This is behind some of the U.S.-West despair. Any solution?

The way out is cease-fire and negotiation, under United Nations auspices, with full Security Council backing. To gain time, switch to a defensive military strategy, defending Baghdad, the Kurds, the Shia and others in Syria and Iraq.

The historical-cultural-political position of ISIS and its successors is strong.

The West cannot offer withdrawal in return for anything because it has already officially withdrawn. The West, however, can offer reconciliation, both in the sense of clearing the past and opening the future.

Known in the United States as “apologism”, a difficult policy to pursue. But for once the onus of Sykes-Picot is not on the United States, but on Britain and France.

Russia dropped out after the 1917 revolution, but revealed the plot.

Bombing, an atrocity, will lead to more ISIS atrocities. A conciliatory West might change that. An international commission could work on Sykes-Picot and its aftermath, and open the book with compensation on it.

Above all, future cooperation. The West, and here the United States enters, could make Israel return the West Bank, except for small cantons, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital – or else! – sparing the horrible long-lasting Arab-Israeli warfare.

This would be decency, sanity, rationality; the question is whether the West possesses these qualities. The prognosis is dim.

There is the Anglo-American self-image as infallible, a gift to humanity, a little rough at times civilising the die-hards, but not weak.

If not an apology, at least they could wish to undo their own policies in the region since, say, 1967. No sign of that.

So much for the willingness. Does the West have the ability? Does it know how to reconcile?

After Portugal and England conquering the East China-East Africa sea lane around 1500, ultimately establishing themselves in Macao and Hong Kong, after the First and Second Opium wars of 1839-1860 in China, ending with Anglo-French forces burning the Imperial Palace in Beijing, did Britain use the “hand over” of Hong Kong to reflect on the past?

Not a word from Prince Charles.

China could have flattened those two colonies – but did not. Given that Islam has retaliation among its values, the West may be in for a lot.

Le Nouvel Observateur lists “groupes terroristes islamistes” in the world: Iraq-Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Uzbekistan, Chechenya.

The groups, named, grew out of similar local circumstances. Imagine that they increasingly share that longing for a caliphate; the Ottoman Empire covered much more than the Middle East, way into Africa and Asia. And more groups are coming. Invincible.

Imagine that Turkey itself shares that dream, maybe hoping to play a major role (in the past, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu a superb academic, a specialist on the Empire.)

Could that be the reason for Turkey not really joining, as it seems, this anti-ISIS crusade?

The West should be realistic, not “realist”. Switch to rationality. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The Golan Druze feel the brunt of Syria’s civil war. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
MAJD E-SHAMS, Israeli-occupied Golan Heights , Dec 11 2013 (IPS)

The faint explosion is a reminder that though the newly refurbished fence protects their town, the two-and-a-half-year-old civil war which is tearing their motherland apart is never far off.

Separated from Syria for almost five decades, the Syrian Druze living in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights are coming to terms with the relative security stemming from their precarious neutrality in the Syrian conflict.

A thousand-year-old offshoot of Islam, the Druze are scattered across Syria, Lebanon and Israel. In this town of 11,000, the largely secular Druze fear the mounting influence of Jihadist rebel groups in the civil war.

“I support President Bashar Assad wholeheartedly because I’m Syrian,” says Hassan Fakhr-Eddin, a member of the close-knit community. “These foreign infidels, they want to turn secular Syria into an Islamist state.”

Though they’re outspoken about their unquestioned allegiance to Syria, politics are cautiously kept under a veil of secrecy.

By and large, Druze are loyal to the country they live in. But here, loyalty to Syria is challenged by the civil war.

At the beginning, the otherwise united and staunchly patriotic community split between Assad’s partisans and opponents. Brawls erupted.

“There are tensions between families and friends. I don’t speak to those who oppose Assad. They’re out of my life,” explains Ghandi Kahlouni, the local pharmacist.

“I’m against dictatorship, but also against any attempt to destroy Syria,” Kahlouni tells IPS. “Now it’s become clear – either you’re with Assad or you support the rebels and you’re a traitor.”

As their war-torn country sinks into an ever deeper quagmire, the Golan Druze are closing ranks. Dejected supporters of democratic change reckon that no revolution is worth the blood already spilled in Syria.

“Of course I’m disappointed, this isn’t what I had hoped for,” acknowledges Salim Safadi from the nearby Druze town of Mas’ade. “At the onset of the so-called revolution, we demonstrated for democratic change in Syria, and that’s legitimate.

“But then,” he continues, “Jihadist terrorists began to surf on the Syrian people’s hope for democracy. So it’s time to reflect. Currently, the alternative to Assad doesn’t provide such hope.”

War here is a distant memory. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War. Six years later, Syria fought another war against Israel to get it back, to no avail.

Ruins attest to the severity of the battle. An estimated 100,000 Golan Druze residents fled the war or were displaced, never allowed to return home. Families were separated. Only 22,000 Druze remain in a cluster of four villages, alongside 22,000 Israeli settlers.

Overlooking Syria, Israeli outposts are implanted on the mountain ridge that dominates the town, as well as in the centre of town. An Israeli flag flies atop the municipality building. It’s actually the only edifice adorned with the Star of David.

Others buildings wave the Druze colours. The Syrian flag is nowhere to be seen, so as not to scare off Israeli tourists, residents say.

Dolan Abu-Saleh is the head of the Majd e-Shams local council. An appointee of the Interior Ministry in Israel, he prudently urges the townspeople to refrain from taking sides in the Syrian conflict.

“Our heart goes out to the Syrian people. At the core of our sense of affiliation to Syria lays our attachment to the land and to our families there, but not necessarily to the regime,” Abu-Saleh tells IPS.

In 1981, Israel passed a law which applies Israeli laws and government to the strategic plateau. Backed by the international community, the Druze reject what in effect amounts to annexing Syria’s territory.

A full 90 percent of them have refused the proposed Israeli citizenship.

Himself a second-generation Israeli, the mayor insists the younger generation, uncertain of what the future holds in Syria, appreciate living under a strong and secure Israel.

“Security is a critical factor in shaping our faith,” says Abu-Saleh. “Youth see their future where it’s more secure. When they hear booms across the fence, they appreciate the value of security. “

Before the civil war, encouraged by the tuition-free education granted to them by the Syrian government, hundreds of Druze youth from the Golan would study science, medicine or dentistry in Syrian universities.

Now, they can be counted on the fingers of two hands.

“As a result of the influx of graduated professionals back home, the economy in the Golan Druze community flourished,” recalls Hamad Aweida, himself a Damascus University IT graduate and a local TV producer.

“Now many stay home, unemployed. The lucky few go to study in Germany, but it’s onerous,” Aweida tells IPS. “I fear that in three to five years, less educated people will be joining the workforce.”

Marah Sabra, 17, wants to emulate her elder sister Roseanne who studies education in the nearby settlement of Qatsrin to become a preschool teacher. “I love Syria and I wish her peace,” Sabra tells IPS from her home in Mas’ade. “But I’m afraid of the war. So my future lies here with Israel.”

The economic fallout is also felt in the farming industry. Apples constitute the main source of income for the Druze farmers.

Before the outbreak of the war, they’d export their apples via the Quneitra border crossing to Syrian markets under a special arrangement in force since 2005 that involves Israel, Syria, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Now, the crossing of apples to Syria is in jeopardy. Though last March the farmers belatedly managed to export 18,000 tons from the previous fall’s yield, they don’t know whether exports to Syria will resume.

“Before the war, we’d receive two or three times the price we get now for a box of apples,” bemoans Tawfiq Mustafa as he waits for Israeli customers to exhaust his stock at the Al-Ya’afuri market.

Packing houses which once processed the fruit prior to distribution to Syria are full, holding 50,000 tons – the Druze’s annual production.

The orchards, meanwhile, have been left to the weeds.

The ceasefire line in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, May 20 2013 (IPS)

Israel is being drawn into Syria’s quagmire as it threatens to act further on transfers of “game-changing” weapons to hostile protagonists involved in Syria’s civil war, be they Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, Jihadist Sunni rebels, or loyalist forces of President Bashar al Assad.

The country does so reluctantly while knowing full well the consequences of such actions. Within weeks, Israel has expanded its list of “tie-breaking”, “game-changing” and “deterrence-diminishing” weapons defined as a “red line” to its security.

Initially, a red line was drawn on any foe gaining control over Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. These weapons, while being used increasingly in the war, are for the time being still secured by Assad’s forces.

But on Jan. 30, when Israeli warplanes destroyed a convoy carrying surface-to-air S-17 missiles supplied by Iran and bound for Hezbollah, it became clear that another type of red line was being crossed, from Israel’s standpoint.

Though it didn’t formally take responsibility for the airstrike, Israel declared it would not tolerate the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, with whom it fought an indecisive war in 2006.

Meanwhile, Iran hopes that greater Hezbollah firepower will deter Israel from striking Iran’s nuclear sites, should it decide to do so.

On May 4 and May 5, Israel followed up by bombing shipments of Iran-made Fateh-110 missiles destined for Hezbollah.

Unlike rockets currently in Hezbollah’s arsenal, the more accurate surface-to-surface Fateh-110 missile is capable of reaching strategic targets south of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area in Israel.

In the last decade, Syria has chosen to ignore Israeli attacks on its territory, including one against its nuclear reactor (Deir ez-Zour, 2007) and another on Hezbollah’s chief of operations, Imad Mughniyeh (Damascus, 2008).

Yet in the wake of the latest airstrike – perhaps because the U.S. Pentagon confirmed Israel’s responsibility and thus, Syria couldn’t possibly keep mute – this time, Syria threatened to retaliate.

To add credibility to Damascus’ threat, Hezbollah also threatens to open a new front on the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967.

Following the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement signed by Israel and Syria, the Golan Heights have largely been quiet, aside from occasional and unintentional mortar fire in the past six months leaking from battles in Syria through the ceasefire line and resulting in Israel’s responding with artillery fire.

Israeli security analysts believe that Assad won’t dare risking engaging a far more formidable enemy than the rebels, even by proxy, while fighting for his own survival. But they won’t say it out loud.

Ten days after the last bombing, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, flew to Sochi for an urgent meeting with Vladimir Putin to try to persuade the Russian president to freeze his country’s commitment to supply anti-aircraft S-300 batteries to the Syrian army.

S-300 anti-aircraft missiles can threaten Israel’s airspace, as they’re capable of intercepting Israeli jets upon takeoff.

The provision of S-300 batteries is a long-standing issue between Israel and Russia, and it’s still unclear as to whether Russia will honour the arms deal with Syria.

Netanyahu’s office says the meetingwth Putin was at the Israeli prime minister’s request, perhaps because other sources indicate that Putin summoned the Israeli leader to warn him of the perils of further interference in Syria.

After all, no one wants Syria to implode – let alone explode and destabilise the entire region. And it’s no secret that Russia is determined to keep Assad in power.

Evidence of such determination are the recent leaks to U.S. newspapers of Russian warships patrolling the Mediterranean Sea near Tartus, Russia’s naval base in Syria, and of new shipments of Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria.

These shipments serve as another “game-changer” that could target Israel’s offshore natural gas drilling rigs, at a time when Russia has agreed with the United States to host an international conference on Syria next month.

To complicate matters further, it’s now becoming patently obvious that Israel’s ever-evolving red lines, if taken to their logical conclusion, could lead to targeting not only shipments of advanced weapons systems and their recipient – Assad’s army – but also, albeit indirectly, the supplier itself: Russia.

Israel’s decision-makers are engaged in a balancing act between their preference for “Israel’s man in Damascus” (as a former Mossad Intelligence chief, Efraim Halevy, recently called Assad in Foreign Affairs) and Israel’s red lines.

Responding to Syria’s threats by words of an “official” in the New York Times, Israel threatened Assad with impending demise.

Correlatively, another “official” in the Times of London declared, “Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos.”

When asked which side he favoured in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1989), then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir quipped, “We want them both to win.” Similarly, Syria’s civil war seems to serve Israel’s interests, as long as it’s a tie.

How Israel can enforce its red lines – by neutralising missiles shipments as they’re being delivered to, or assembled in, Syria? How would Moscow react? How would Damascus react? – is no longer so simple.

After all, if Israel and Russia both want Assad to stay in power, then why try to dissuade Russia from boosting the embattled Syrian leader’s loyal forces? The answer comes almost inadvertently from the “official” in the Times of London: Israel “underestimated Assad’s staying power”.

Meanwhile, the United States still grapples with how to react to the use of chemical weapons in Syria – a “game-changer” as far as President Barack Obama is concerned, yet not one that changes their Israeli ally’s hands-off approach to the civil war.

Caught in a miniature cold war between Russia and the United States, Israel risks sinking into the civil war’s quagmire and allowing Iran to evade further scrutiny on its nuclear programme while the international community is preoccupied with the situation on the ground in Syria.

In a potential new source of contention between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has reportedly granted a U.S. energy firm with heavyweight political connections to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights.

The company is a local subsidiary of New Jersey-based Genie Energy Ltd. The Strategic Advisory Board of another subsidiary, Genie Oil and Gas, includes former Vice President Dick Cheney, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and former Republican Rep. Jim Courter.

It also includes several prominent investment managers, such as Jacob Rothschild, chairman of the J. Rothschild group, and Michael Steinhardt, a major contributor to Jewish and Zionist causes, notably Birthright Israel, a multi-million-dollar programme to bring young Diaspora Jews to Israel. By their own admission, the Israeli government says it’s occupied territory. So why would they invest millions of dollars in occupied territory?

The granting of the licence by Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, which was initially reported by Dow Jones Thursday, comes amidst continuing civil war in Syria, which has demanded the return of the Heights since Israel took them in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

It also comes a month before Obama is scheduled to make his first visit to Israel as president.

Some analysts here compared the move to previous announcements by the Netanyahu government of new settlement construction on the West Bank or East Jerusalem — either on the eve of or during meetings with top U.S. officials – that have clearly contributed to thinly veiled tensions that exist between the two leaders.

The administration remained tight-lipped about the move Friday, confining itself only to issuing a terse statement by the State Department acknowledging the press reports about the licence.

“We intend to discuss this issue with the Israeli Government,” it said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of Netanyahu’s plan to put additional pressure on the U.S., as he’s done with President Obama in the past,” Charles Ebinger, an energy and Middle East expert at the Brookings Institutions, told IPS. “He keeps changing the facts on the ground through expansion of settlements and now this on the Golan.

“He keeps taking these actions, whether with the Palestinians or the Syrians. It makes it more and more difficult for the Arabs to come to the table,” he added. “It’s definitely contrary to international law and goes against any number of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

“The move probably was not intended primarily to stick a thumb in the eye of the United States,” noted Paul Pillar, a former top Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), “but coming only a month before President Obama’s scheduled trip to Israel, it demonstrates again that the Netanyahu government evidently is not bothered by doing just that.

“The Israelis may be anticipating a replacement of the (President Bashar Al-)Assad regime by new Syrian rulers who would push harder for return of the Golan Heights. The idea from Israel’s perspective would be to try to strengthen its claim to the territory by creating still more facts not only on the ground but underground,” he told IPS in an email exchange.

Unlike East Jerusalem, Israel has not tried to “annex” the Golan Heights, although in 1981 it extended Israeli law and administration to the territory – a move that was declared “null and void” by the U.N. Security Council. The U.S., which at various times has tried to mediate a peace accord between Syria and Israel, has never recognised the Jewish State’s occupation there.

The Heights, which successive Israeli governments have said they are prepared to return to Damascus under certain conditions, currently hold 32 Jewish settlements with a total population of around 20,000.

In 2008, Turkey reportedly came close to mediating a peace accord between Israel and Syria that included a return of the Heights, but the effort fell apart when Israel launched its “Cast Lead” military operation in Gaza late that year.

Despite the ongoing civil war in Syria, hostilities between Assad’s forces and rebel groups have only rarely crossed the border into the Israeli-controlled territory.

Some analysts said the move appeared designed in part to take advantage of the ongoing chaos inside Syria.

Successive Israeli governments rejected drilling applications in the past mainly out of a desire to avoid inflaming tensions with Damascus, according to one knowledgeable source who declined to be identified.

“With no effective government in Damascus, I guess they figured no harm would come from going ahead,” the source said.

One prominent U.S.-based anti-Assad activist, Husam Aldairi, expressed astonishment at the move, asking “How is it possible to give a licence for drilling in occupied territory?”

Aldairi, who has served as the president of the U.S. section of the Syrian National Council and now serves as vice chairman of the opposition’s National Coalition’s Tribal Council, said the move “will only serve the purpose of supporting Assad against the revolution.”

“I truthfully think that is a very negative thing to do at this point,” he told IPS in an interview in which he stressed that he was speaking in his personal capacity only.

“You’re only agitating the Syrian people. At this point, they will not be too worried about it, but, in the long run, there has to be a peaceful resolution over the Golan Heights. By their own admission, the Israeli government says it’s occupied territory. So why would they invest millions of dollars in occupied territory?”

The licence, which was reportedly contested by the affected settler communities for environmental among other reasons, will permit Genie Israel Oil and Gas Ltd to conduct exploratory drilling in most of the southern part of the Heights.

Genie, which has an exploration licence in the Shfela region of central Asia through another Israeli subsidiary, Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), and a joint venture with France’s Total to produce shale oil in the U.S. state of Colorado, said it believes the southern Golan contains “significant quantities of conventional oil and gas in relatively tight formations”.

It’s not clear whether the licence approval may have been affected by the political clout and sympathies of the Strategic Advisory Board members, such as Cheney who was a staunch advocate of Israel’s rightist governments during his vice-presidency from 2001 to 2009.

Murdoch’s media empire, which includes Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, has also been a reliable advocate of Netanyahu’s Likud Party positions over the past 15 years, and particularly since 9/11. Until he sold it several years ago, Murdoch also financed William Kristol’s “Weekly Standard”, a hard-line neo-conservative journal.

Steinhardt provided major funding for the Foundation for the Defense of the Democracy (FDD), a particularly hawkish lobby group whose views are close to those of the Likud Party, from its launch just a few days after 9/11 until at least 2008, according to tax records.

Like Cheney and Murdoch’s U.S. publications, FDD championed the Iraq invasion and, in more recent years, has played an important role in drafting and lobbying for draconian sanctions against Iran.

He also co-founded and has donated millions of dollars to Birthright Israel, a programme that provides 10-day, all-expenses-paid trips to Israel to tens of thousands young Jews from around the world each year. In an interview with U.S. journalist Max Blumenthal at a Birthright rally and dance in Israel last year, Steinhardt insisted that “there was no Palestinian people.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Skiing on Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
MOUNT HERMON, Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Feb 13 2013 (IPS)

Unbending winds howl in the mountain, seldom carrying echoes of the two-year-old civil war closing in on Damascus just 35 kilometres away. But Israelis revel in immaculate pleasure. Albeit an internationally-recognised Syrian territory, the Israeli-controlled high ground is de facto their one and only ski resort.

“It’s the first time I ski,” says Ilana Marciano from the Mediterranean city Netanya as she laboriously extracts herself from the 60-centimetre layer of snow, “Amazing, just great!”

Mt. Hermon is all grainy snow this winter, an exotic fantasyland really for people more accustomed to the fun of sea and sun. Some 10,000 visitors flock to the ski resort on a regular day, according to the site management.

‘Jabel a-Sheikh’ as the mountain range is known in Arabic is hailed by Israelis as their country’s “eyes”. Perched high above the border triangle between Israel, Lebanon and Syria, Mt. Hermon provides a bird’s-eye view on large swaths of territory from its 2,236 metre height.

There the Israeli military maintains several observation and intelligence posts. On a clear day one can see Damascus.

To the northeast, Syrian military positions dominate the Lebanese Beqaa valley. At 2,814 metres, atop a buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian fortifications, is ‘Hermon hotel’, the world’s highest UN peacekeeping station.

The Golan Heights were conquered by Israel from Syria in the wake of the June 1967 Six Day War. They were briefly re-conquered by Syria six years later but reoccupied by Israel immediately thereafter.

During the Israeli invasion, some 100,000 Syrian Druze fled the Golan Heights. Now, alongside 20,000 Druze who remained on the steep slopes of Mt. Hermon in four towns and villages, 18,000 Israelis have made the Golan plateau their home in 32 settlements.

Beyond the 80-kilometre fence, the minefields and the military outposts scattered along the UN-monitored ceasefire line, beyond the 0.5 to 10 km wide buffer zone, Syrian villages and fortified positions are clearly visible.

In May 1974, Israel and Syria signed the Separation of Forces Agreement, which to this day is cautiously respected by both sides. For almost four decades, the strategic highland has remained frozen in status quo suspended between peace and war, like swinging chairlifts so to speak.

A strange sense of entrenched oblivion haunts Mt. Hermon.

If it wasn’t for the border clash in June 2011 near the Druze town Majdal Shams in which some 20 Palestinian and Syrian protestors were shot while attempting to penetrate the Israeli-controlled area, or for a few errant mortar shells which landed on this side of the fence in November, the bloody civil war raging in nearby Syria would hardly be felt.

“There’s no tension; it’s peaceful here,” says Amit Rotem, a student from Jerusalem. “Until something happens, nothing happens, that’s the way I see it. Because we’re used to it – that’s how we live.”

Yet most recently, on Jan. 30, tension reached new peaks with an Israeli airstrike near a military research centre located in the vicinity of Damascus allegedly on a weapons convoy suspected of carrying SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles to the Shia militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Three days earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned against Syria’s chemical and biological arsenal “coming apart”.

At the heavily-protected ski resort, fun goes on as usual. “This incident didn’t even cross my mind,” notes a passing skier, “Maybe I’m too optimistic.”

“(Former president) Hafez Assad and his son and successor Bashar Assad gave us long-term quiet. I hope the situation won’t deteriorate further,” Shaul Ohana, the ski resort manager tells IPS.

In 1981, Israel passed a law which applies its “laws, jurisdiction and administration” to the Golan Heights, thereby in effect – if not formally – annexing the occupied territory. Some 10 percent of Syrian Golan Druze accepted Israeli citizenship but the law was never recognised by the international community.

During the 1990s, two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, expressed their readiness to return Mt. Hermon and, by and large the Golan Heights, to Syria for peace.

“In retrospect, the mere thought that a withdrawal from here would be considered is whimsical. There’s nothing to return. And to whom would you return the Golan anyway,” says Ohana.

A law passed in 2010 stipulates that handover of any annexed territory – be it the Golan Heights, including Mt. Hermon, or occupied east Jerusalem – as part of future peace deals requires either a super-majority in parliament or a national referendum.

“Mt. Hermon will always be with us,” is the self-confident leitmotiv heard on the slopes.

From a 2,000-metre high perspective, nobody seems to worry that the strategic mountain, its natural reserve and ski resort of 14 pistes and five lifts arrayed on 45 kilometres of pristine slopes might one day be returned to Syria.

Risks of war, chances of peace with Syria – both seem from here virtually remote. (End)