Hezbollah denies targeting Golan Heights

Hezbollah has categorically denied what it said were claims made by the enemy that it had targeted an area in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A projectile landed on a soccer field in Majdal Shams on Saturday killed 12 people, including children. 

Majdal Shams is an Arabic-speaking village populated by around 25,000 residents from the Druze community who have a Muslim background. The Golan Heights is a territory that belongs to Syria. It was captured by the Israeli occupation forces in 1967.

Amid ongoing Hezbollah operations against Israeli military positions, in solidarity with Gaza, the Lebanese resistance informed the UN that the Golan Heights incident was the result of an Israeli interceptor hitting the soccer field. 

This is not the first time Israeli missile batteries and Iron Dome systems have missed their targets and hit Majdal Shams.

A similar incident occurred on July 10, when Tel Aviv was quick to blame Hezbollah. 

Assessments later showed technical failure with Israeli defense systems was behind the Majdal Shams incident on July 10, despite Tel Aviv quickly shifting the blame to Hezbollah. 

The attack on Saturday on the Druze community, who also enjoy a large presence in Lebanon, has again raised suspicions due to the timing, the nature of the civilian target, and the size of the explosion.

It is inconsistent with ten months of daily operations by Hezbollah that have pounded Israeli military sites, and on occasions, Israeli settlements, in retaliation for deadly Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians. 

Hezbollah confirmed its complete lack of involvement in the incident, refuting all the “false claims” being spread. 

Issuing a statement Hezbollah said, “The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon categorically denies the claims made by some enemy media and various media platforms about targeting Majdal Shams. It confirms that the Islamic Resistance has no connection with the incident whatsoever and unequivocally denies all false claims in this regard.”

The residents of Majdal Shams, located a few kilometers from Lebanon, are aware that their town, under the rules of war, was within a zone of peace and security. 

Hezbollah is also aware of this and of its wide range of military targets.

Experts say that between the determination, sincerity and transparency of the Lebanese resistance and the criminal history of the Israeli occupation, only one party has a track record of lies and that is Tel Aviv. 

Furthermore, the genocidal war waged by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military against the Gaza Strip, along with the international positions, judicial or political, strongly point to the real perpetrator.

In light of the accusations launched by Israeli officials and media after the Majdal Shams incident, Netanyahu cut his trip to the United States short by several hours and returned to Tel Aviv. 

Israeli media said he was to chair a meeting of the small ministerial council. Hebrew media also reported that Netanyahu held preliminary consultations with military officials.

Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri confirmed that Hezbollah’s denial affirms its commitment and non-responsibility, and that Lebanon is not responsible for what happened. 

During a call with a UN Coordinator in Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, Berri stated that Lebanon, which has been subjected to continuous Israeli aggression for over nine months, with the Israeli military targeting civilians, agricultural areas, emergency crews, and media personnel with internationally banned weapons, remains committed to Resolution 1701 and the rules of engagement by not targeting civilians, despite these blatant Israeli violations.

Former Lebanese Druze Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt said, “In light of Hezbollah’s statement denying the Islamic Resistance’s involvement in what happened in Majdal Shams, we emphasize the warning and alert regarding what the Israeli enemy has been working on for a long time to ignite strife and fragment the region and its components.”

The veteran politician added, “We have previously thwarted this project, and while it is reemerging, we are prepared alongside the resistance and all those confronting Israeli criminality and occupation.”

Jumblatt pointed out that “the history and ongoing nature of the Israeli enemy is full of massacres committed against civilians relentlessly”. 

He added, "The call is for everyone in Lebanon, Palestine, and the Golan to avoid any slip or incitement within the framework of the enemy’s destructive project, with the need to prevent the expansion of the war and to stop the aggression and firing immediately, emphasizing the rejection and condemnation of targeting civilians, whether in occupied Palestine, the occupied Golan, or southern Lebanon.”

Meanwhile, the head of the Lebanese Democratic Party and political leader of the Druze community, Talal Arslan, underscored, “What happened is nothing but a vile and failed attempt to detach the Arab Syrian Golan from its geographical nature and familial extensions, which has always rejected collusion against its Syrian Arab identity.”

He said in a statement, “The Golan will not fall into the trap of Israel’s project to feign protection of minorities, which aims only to fragment the region into micro-states that protect its forged borders.”

He also stated that “all free people in the world and in the Arab homeland, especially the unified national Arab Druze, are wholeheartedly with our people in the heroic Golan. It is the depth of our honorable resistance and an inseparable part of the occupied territories, which will only return to its natural state through steadfastness and resistance.”

The UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and UNIFIL force commander General Aroldo Lazaro warned that further intensification of strikes “could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief”. 

They urged maximum restraint from all sides, adding they were in contact with both the Israelis and Lebanese. 

Axios cited a US official as saying that the Golan incident “could be the trigger we have been worried about and tried to avoid for 10 months”. 

Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, told Reuters that any significant attack by Israel would lead to a “regional war”. 

 

 

Israel claims curbing Iran’s ability to transfer weapons to Syria

The Israeli military has destroyed about 90% of Iran's military infrastructure and attempts to entrench itself - with Hezbollah - in Syria, top officials in the defense establishment claimed over the weekend.

According to the officials, Israel has in recent years succeeded in almost completely curbing Iran's ability to transfer weapons to Syria, to manufacture weapons on the country's soil and to establish a base in it with pro-Iranian forces.

According to the sources, the plan of the former commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by the Americans in 2020, has failed due to the IDF’s continued air campaign against the forces in Syria.

The last alleged attack attributed to Israel in Syria was Friday when local media reported that the IDF attacked near the airport in Damascus after about a month of relative silence.

The sources said that despite the tension between Israel and Russia – which recently threatened Jerusalem not to transfer arms to Ukraine - the deconfliction mechanism to prevent Russian-Israeli friction in Syria is working as usual.

Periods without attacks, the sources said, are usually the result of an Iranian decision to suspend the smuggling of weapons to Syria, in order to try and find a new route to trick Israel.

The security officials emphasized that the IDF severely damaged Iran's smuggling routes from the sea, from the air and even from the land from Iran to Syria.

As a result of the attacks, the ability of the Syrian army to produce weapons and ammunition has also been damaged since the Iranians and Hezbollah used the same factories for the production of their weapons.

The focus of the attacks in recent years has also been to stop the smuggling of components for CERS – the Centre D’Etudes et de Recherches Scientifiques (CERS) in Masyaf that is used by Iran to produce advanced missiles and weapons for its proxies.

Along with this, the assessment in Israel is that Syrian President Bashar Assad has reduced the activity of Iran and Hezbollah in his country, with an emphasis on the Syrian Golan Heights and the south of the country.

According to sources in Israel, Assad has realized that in the coming years he will not be able to regain territories occupied by the Kurds, including the Turks, and instead focuses his power on trying to restore stability to the major cities with an emphasis on Damascus and the region including the coastline.

 

Iran terms holding of Israeli cabinet meeting in Golan Heights provocative

Iranian Foreign Ministry has denounced the provocative move of the Israeli regime to hold a cabinet meeting in the occupied Golan Heights that belongs to Syria.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described this act as “provocative”, stressing that the occupied Golan Heights is an integral part of the Arab Republic of Syria in line with numerous United Nations Resolutions, especially UN Security Council Resolution 497.

Khatibzadeh added the UN General Assembly has underlined this “undeniable reality” every year that the Golan Heights is part of the Syrian territory.

Settlement expansions and an increase in the number of migrant in the occupied Golan Heights cannot change this reality, he said, adding Israeli settlers should understand that they cannot remain in occupied territories forever, the Foreign Ministry reported at its website.

He also reaffirmed the Islamic Republic’s solidarity with as well as its unwavering and iron-clad support for the Arab Republic of Syria in this regard.

On December 26, the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett voted in favor of a plan that aims to build 7,300 settler homes in Golan over a five-year period. The decision was taken during the cabinet meeting in Golan.

Israel aims to attract roughly 23,000 new Jew settlers to the area occupied during the Six Day War in 1967.

Israel annexed the territory on December 14, 1981, in a move not recognized by the international community.

 

Biden administration considers West Bank occupied territory, says Ned Price

Biden administration clarified that it considers the West Bank to be occupied territory, but ducked a question as to whether it held that settlements were illegal. "It is a historical fact that Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in the 1967 War," US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

The issue was raised after the Biden administration published on Tuesday the 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. It is the first of the annual reports released since US President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. The report affirmed steps taken by the previous Trump administration, which had both recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

It also kept in place a description change made to the report by former US president Donald Trump, in which he replaced the phrase "Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories" with "Israel, West Bank and Gaza."

But within the report, the Biden administration reintroduced the word "occupied" to describe Israel's seizure of territory during the 1967 Six Day War. 

When questioned by a reporter as to whether the US considered that Israel occupied the West Bank, Price affirmed that it did.

"In fact, the 2020 Human Rights Report does use the term 'occupation' in the context of the current status of the West Bank," Price said. "This has been the longstanding position of previous administrations of both parties over the course of many decades."

Israel has long argued that the West Bank does not meet the standard of occupied territory, because it captured the area from Jordan, whose sovereignty there from 1948-1967 was not recognized legally and which itself was considered to be occupying it.

Prior to the 1948 War of Independence, the territory was held by Great Britain; prior World War I, it was part of the Ottoman Empire.

The Trump administration believed that Israel had historic and religious rights to portions of that territory and did not refer to it as occupied. Its top officials agreed with the Israeli Right, that the proper term was Judea and Samaria and not the West Bank, terminology linked to the time when the territory was under Jordanian rule.

Trump also changed US policy toward Israeli West Bank settlements. It rejected a 1978 memo by then US State Department legal advisor Herbert J. Hansell declaring that the settlements were illegal, declaring instead that they were not inconsistent with Israeli law.

The United Nations holds that Israel's settlements are illegal and that the West Bank is occupied Palestinian territory.

The Biden administration has yet to clarify its stance on the settlements, even though it is presumed to support a two-state solution at the pre-1967 lines.

At Wednesday's press conference, a reporter asked Price, "Does the US consider, for example, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to be illegal as a result of this stance?"

Price responded that the US position had not changed, but he clarified that stance in his own way.

"We – as you have heard me say before – we continue to encourage all sides to avoid actions – both sides, I should say – to avoid actions that would put the two-state solution further out of reach. 

"Again, our ultimate goal here is to facilitate – to help bring about – a two-state solution because it is the best path to preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state while bestowing on the Palestinians their legitimate aspirations of sovereignty and dignity in a state of their own," he said.

These lines are often his and other Biden official's standard response to many questions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.