Israel strikes Assad military posts after errant rocket hit its territory

[Insight]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134665268.htm


Israel strikes Syria military posts after errant rocket hit its territory


English.news.cn 2015-09-28 03:55:24
JERUSALEM/DAMASCUS, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army said Sunday night that it fired artillery into Syria in response to an errant projectile that hit earlier the Golan Heights, in a second such incident in two days.
Earlier this evening, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that a rocket landed in an open field in the northern Golan Heights. No injuries or damages were reported.
The rocket was launched from the war-torn Syria and "was due to the internal fighting in Syria," a military statement said.
"This is the second time in the past two days errant fire from the Syrian Armed Forces landed in Israeli territory," according to the statement.
In response, IDF artillery targeted two Syrian army posts in the central Syrian Golan Heights.
"Israel will not tolerate violation of its sovereignty," said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman with the IDF. "The Syrian military is responsible and accountable for any aggression emanating from Syria," he added.
Errant fire from the fighting in Syria has been occasionally spilling over to Israel, usually causing no damages or injuries.
The Golan Heights, originally a Syrian territory, was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. Israel later annexed it in a move unrecognized by the international community.

[Insight]

http://news.ftcpublications.com/isra...urces-monitor/


Israeli strikes hit Syrian army on Golan: rebel sources, monitor

Posted By Staff on September 27, 2015


BEIRUT Israel struck Syrian army targets on the Golan Heights on Sunday, sources on both sides said, and Israel said it was retaliating for cross-border rocket fire from the Syrian war next door.
Rebel sources in southern Syria and a British-based monitoring group said at least three Israeli air strikes had hit army sites near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied part of the strategic plateau.
Israel’s army confirmed it had targeted two Syrian army posts, but said it used artillery fire, not air strikes, in response to “errant” rockets from inside Syria landing on its territory.
Fighting between government forces and rebels in the Quneitra area of the Syrian Golan Heights has intensified in recent days.
It was the first Israeli fire on southern Syria in more than a month. Israel has attacked Syrian armed forces and arch-foe Lebanese Hezbollah, a Damascus ally, during the four-year-old civil war in its hostile neighbor.
Last month Israel waged its heaviest bombardment since the conflict began, killing Palestinian militants in response to cross-border fire.
It has said it holds the Syrian government responsible for any spillover of violence.
Diplomatic efforts to find a solution to the Syrian war have intensified as record numbers of migrants travel to Europe, and as Russia steps up its military aid for ally President Bashar al-Assad.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin on Monday agreed to set up an Israeli-Russian coordination team to prevent the countries accidentally trading fire in Syria.
Israel captured the western Golan in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it, a move not recognized internationally.
(Reporting by John Davison; editing by Andrew Roche)

Posted in Newswire

[Insight]

This is the first Israeli strikes on Assad military targets after Russia made its presence in Syria public.

[Insight]

http://www.defensenews.com/story/def...alks/73522760/


Israel, Russia Conclude First Round of Deconfliction Talks

By Barbara Opall-Rome 1:32 p.m. EDT October 7, 2015
Mull Downgrading Level of Follow-on Talks to Ensure Discretion







TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel and Russia concluded their first round of talks Wednesday toward establishing "a joint mechanism for preventing misunderstandings" between respective forces operating in Syria, with follow-on talks likely to be downgraded to lower echelon officers to ensure discretion, sources here said.
Officially, both sides are keeping uncharacteristically mum on the outcome of the two-day visit here by Nikolai Bogdanovski, deputy chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and his counterpart and host, Maj. Gen. Yair Golan.
Despite advance publicity generated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following a Sept. 21 Moscow meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the bilateral session concluded here without a statement issued by either side.
In contrast, the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday published a notice that similar talks with Turkey were continuing in order "to elaborate the mechanism for prevention of incidents on the Syrian-Turkish border."






In an Oct. 7 interview, an IDF officer indicated that agreement on modalities would take time and that future sessions may be handled by lower level officers in order to temper expectations and preserve discretion.
"It could be done by lower-echelon officers. We don't want to make too much of it. We want to prevent conflict, but we don't yet know how to do it," the officer said.
"In the end, we'll agree on a mechanism and how it will be done. But it requires defining areas where one operates and making sure the other side won't interfere or harm you, and vice versa."
The officer added that Israel's primary interest is at its border with Syria, where as recently as late September, the IDF shelled an area of the Syrian Golan Heights from which a rocket was launched into Israeli territory. That incident followed a more forceful Israeli response on Aug. 21, when the Israel Air Force targeted 14 Syrian military posts in the Golan Heights in response to a barrage of rockets that landed in Israel's upper Galilee region.
"We have two problems in Syria, both of which have nothing to do with Russia: One is the terror that is directed against us at our border, and for that we're operating all the time. The other is the smuggling of high-value arms to Hizbollah, and needless to say we're following this very closely."
When asked if the dozens of fighter aircraft, gunships and transports operating in Syrian airspace lend urgency to resolving outstanding issues toward a joint deconfliction mechanism, the officer replied: "Of course it's essential to avoid confliction, but until that happens, our Air Force will know how to take care of itself in problematic situations."
He added, "Everyone is shouting 'Russians, Russians, Russians,' but what about the Americans and dozens of others who have already been there for a year? At any given moment, there are hundreds of coalition planes in the air … The sky is vast."
In the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry published official accounts of operational activity in and around Syrian territory averaging some 15 sorties per day.
On Oct. 6, it reported 20 combat sorties of Su-34, Su-24M and Su-25 aircraft that attacked "rear infrastructural facilities, command centers, training camps and militants' bases" which the ministry claimed belonged to ISIS, or the Islamic State.
A day earlier, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed it targeted 10 "terror facilities" and destroyed about 20 T-55 tanks "seized earlier from the Syrian army" east of Homs. And during the night of Oct. 4, the Ministry announced airstrikes had destroyed about 30 armored and other ground vehicles, including tanks, "in the forest area near Idlib."
Dima Adamsky, an associate professor at Israel's Inter-Disciplinary Center's Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, says Moscow does not distinguish between the Islamic State and other rebel forces fighting against its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"Moscow does not differentiate between moderate and extremist rebels and qualifies any anti-Assad combatants as terrorists – as the targets of strikes to date make clear," he wrote in a recent Foreign Affairs article published by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
Adamsky noted that ongoing Israeli-Russian deconfliction talks would only partially address the issue of risk posed by Israeli and Russian forces operating in the same general theater of operations. In his Foreign Affairs piece, he raised the specter of Syrian and Iranian forces seeking to operate "as close as possible to Russian forces," which he warned would effectively turn Russian ground elements into "human shields."
"Israel has routinely been conducting strikes exactly where the Russians are now expanding their foothold… Israel has signaled its neutrality toward the conflict, but it is unclear how the Israel Air Force will tolerate potential jamming, cyber strikes and limits of its space for maneuvering or if Moscow decides to establish an electromagnetic cordon sanitaire and anti access-area denial sphere around the pro-Assad coalition's operational theater," he wrote.