Defence forces Deployment to UNDOF

[The real Jack]

True or false?

UNDOF allows through/escorts Jabhat Al Nusra casualties to the Israeli border where they're picked up by IDF forces and brought to Israeli hospitals.

[Bravo20]

That would be an ecumenical matter.

[Rhodes]

True or false?

UNDOF allows through/escorts Jabhat Al Nusra casualties to the Israeli border where they're picked up by IDF forces and brought to Israeli hospitals.

The Israelis have been bringing Al-Nusra Front and other jihadist groups members and vehicles into the occupied Alpha side since the conflict started and sending them back with box loads of who knows what. They have even brought pack mules across in the Mount Hermon area and sent them back loaded up with boxes.
UNDOF does not escort or approve of these crossings.

[Rhodes]

Heavy machine gun fire lands on Irish Golan base

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...base-1.3148704

[Rhodes]

"The 56 Infantry Group are the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force’s Mobile Reserve.
At a moment’s notice they are expected to undertake reinforcement, evacuation and escort operations throughout the Force’s area of responsibility in the Golan Heights.
Check out our video which features a robust, night-time Casualty Evacuation Exercise the Group recently conducted."

[trellheim]

fk me UNDOF and UNIFIL must be looking across to saudi and wondering what the fk is going to happen now if they go war on the lebanese.

[DeV]

fk me UNDOF and UNIFIL must be looking across to saudi and wondering what the fk is going to happen now if they go war on the lebanese.

Saudi pot kettle

[trellheim]

Syria sitrep

worth a click
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPpUmKqWsAANvmJ.jpg

[pym]

Several sirens sounded in the area of the Golan Heights. The details are being looked into and will be given shortly

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) May 9, 2018

Hoping everyone out there is safe.

[na grohmití]

Lots of sabre rattling from both sides since the US pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal. (based on intel provided by Israel who had nothing but good intentions at heart). Israel since then has been warning of, or reporting on, percieved threats from Iran backed Syria...

[pym]

Allegedly 20+ rockets fired from Syria at Israeli positions, Israeli's apparently retaliating with artillery.

They're indicating Iranian forces are directly involved. This is a massive shit show to be caught in the middle of.

Locals are reporting of an extraordinarily prolonged exchange as #Israel fires back on #Syria positions right now. #Iran

— Michael Wilner (@mawilner) May 9, 2018

[Flamingo]

Israel strikes Iranian targets in Syria after rockets hit Golan Heights
Israel's military says it has attacked dozens of Iranian targets in Syria after Iranian forces there fired rockets at the occupied Golan Heights.

About 20 rockets were launched by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, but caused no injuries, the military said.

Israeli forces retaliated by targeting what it identified as weapons depots, and logistics and intelligence sites.

There was no immediate comment from Iran, which has sent troops to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian state media reported that the army's air defences had repelled an "Israeli aggression" on Syrian territory, shooting down scores of missiles.

But a military source told the official Sana news agency that some missiles had hit a number of air defence battalions, radars and an ammunition depot.

Israel's government has vowed to stop what it considers its arch-enemy's "military entrenchment" in Syria, and it is believed to have carried out several strikes on Iranian facilities since February.

It has been anticipating a retaliatory attack by Iran or its proxies in Syria since seven Revolutionary Guards personnel were killed in a strike on an airbase in April.

What happened in the Golan?
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has targeted dozens of Iranian facilities with air strikes in retaliation for the attack, which has not been confirmed by Iran.

It said weapons stores, missile launchers and intelligence facilities were all targeted in the wave of strikes overnight.

Syria's state news agency Sana said Israeli missiles had been shot down south of Homs, but reported that a weapons depot and a radar installation had been hit.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned Iran in no uncertain terms on Thursday morning.

"If it rains in Israel, it will pour in Iran," he said.

But Mr Lieberman also added that this was not the beginning of a large confrontation.

"I hope we finished this chapter and everyone got the message," the minister said.

The latest confrontation follows a reported Israeli missile strike on a military outpost south of the Syrian capital of Damascus on Tuesday.

Sana reported that two missiles were shot down in the Kiswah area and that two civilians were killed in an explosion.

But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said the missiles hit an Iranian weapons depot, killing 15 pro-government fighters.

Eight members of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards force and several other non-Syrian nationals were among those killed, it said.

Israel has occupied most of the Syrian Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it in a move not recognised internationally.

Why does Israel hit Iranian interests?
Iran is Israel's arch-foe and has repeatedly called for an end to the existence of the Jewish state.

It is a major ally of Syria and has deployed hundreds of troops to the country. It says they are there as military advisers to Syria.

Thousands of militiamen armed, trained and financed by Iran - mostly from Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, but also Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen - have also been fighting alongside the Syrian army.

Iran has increasingly strengthened its military presence in Syria, something which Israel considers a direct threat.

Israel has vowed to prevent Iran from entrenching itself there and has targeted, or is believed to have targeted, Iranian assets and positions, increasingly in recent months.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel may go to war with Iran "sooner rather than later" to stop it attacking Israel.

Mr Netanyahu has been instrumental in urging Mr Trump to end his support for the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Last week, he unveiled what he said was a cache of Iranian documents proving it had not ended its efforts to build a nuclear weapon, in defiance of the deal.

Mr Netanyahu was in Moscow this week, informing Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country is an ally of Iran and Syria, about the findings.

Map of Golan Heights

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-44063022

[trellheim]

slightly out of date
http://www.understandingwar.org/back...outhwest-syria

[DeV]

All Irish personnel reported accounted for and safe

[Flamingo]

Why Netanyahu Really Wanted Trump to Scuttle the Iran Deal

On Wednesday night, twenty rockets were fired, from Syria, at the Golan Heights by, according to Israel, Iran’s Quds force, a special-forces unit of the Revolutionary Guard. Some got through Israel’s advanced missile-defense shield, but there were no injuries. Israel responded by launching seventy missiles, killing at least twenty-three fighters, including five Syrian troops and eighteen allied militiamen. The Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said that the I.D.F. had destroyed “nearly all” of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria. The Iranian attack had been expected; for days now, the Israeli media has been full of reports of people on the Golan cleaning out their shelters. On April 9th, Israel reportedly attacked the T-4 Syrian Air Force base near Homs. Seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, who had apparently been establishing an airbase, complete with anti-aircraft batteries, were killed. Last week, Israel reportedly bombed a major cache of Iranian missiles north of Hama, in Syria. “Everyone knows Israel has conducted over a hundred such attacks,” the veteran Syrian analyst Charles Glass told me in a telephone conversation from London. Iran threatened retaliation, which came last night.

The attacks and counterattacks came just a couple of days after President Trump’s announcement, on Tuesday, that the United States was withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the Iran nuclear deal. The stories are often reported separately, but they should not be. The withdrawal is a part of a larger story, possibly a larger strategy, which began with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprise presentation at the Defense Ministry, in Tel Aviv, on April 30th. Its purpose was ostensibly to persuade the Trump Administration to confront a long-term nuclear threat to Israel. Its more plausible purpose was to prompt Trump to confront an immediate conventional threat. After Trump’s announcement, Israel attacked Kiswah, south of Damascus—again, an act designed to thwart Iran from firing rockets from Syria at northern Israel. Eight Iranians were reported to be among the fifteen killed.

Netanyahu, at his press conference, claimed to expose “something that the world has never seen before,” Iranian documents—“fifty-five thousand pages, another fifty-five thousand files on one hundred-and eighty-three CDs”—secured by Israeli intelligence. The cache showed that Iran had operated a secret nuclear-weapons program from 1999 to 2003, the so-called Project Amad. The J.C.P.O.A., Netanyahu said, presumed that Iran would “come clean” about its past nuclear program, but, he claimed, after signing the deal, in 2015, Iran “intensified its efforts to hide its secret nuclear files.” The inference was clear: “Iran lied, big time”; the regime hid its nuclear files, cataloguing its nuclear knowledge, because it intended “to use them at a later date.” On Tuesday, as if on cue, Trump mirrored Netanyahu’s concern. “At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction: that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program,” Trump said.

Continued at https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily...-the-iran-deal

[Rhodes]

PEACE MISSION Irish Defence Forces to continue participation in overseas peacekeeping missions in Syria and Kosovo after securing Government approval

Irish troops contributing to UNDOF are also set to relocate to Camp Faouar in Syria having left in 2014 due to an escalation of fighting

THE Irish Defence Forces will continue their participation in two overseas peacekeeping missions after securing Government approval.

Ireland currently contribute to the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in Syria and the UN authorised International Security Presence in Kosovo (KFOR).

UNDOF was established in 1974 and remains an important element in ensuring some level of stability in the Middle East.

Members of the 57th Infantry Group are presently based in Camp Ziouani on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights since being relocated from Camp Faouar on the Syrian side due to an escalation in fighting in 2014.

However, troops are now set to return to Camp Faouar this year.

Defence Minister Paul Kehoe had advised Government that conditions such as force protection, medical provision, access and exit routes, would have to be met before a full return of Irish Defence Force personnel to Camp Faouar would be permitted.

After visiting the camp, Irish military authorities were satisfied that conditions had improved sufficiently and Irish troops will relocate later this year.

The move will be subject to an ongoing assessment of the region’s security situation and continued improvement of protection measures and living standards within the camp.

It has also been proposed that Ireland will continue to provide members of the Defence Force for service with the mission for a further 12 months.

The news comes as the country prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Ireland’s participation in UN peacekeeping.

A special event will be held at midday at Dublin Castle this Sunday, June 24.

Commenting, Minister Kehoe said: “It will be a fitting opportunity to honour the men and women who have served our country with distinction in peacekeeping missions around the world.”

https://www.thesun.ie/news/2735807/i...keeping-syria/