Turkey hints at Syria operation amid discussions of NATO enlargement

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reviews the honor guard during a ceremony marking the docking of a submarine, in Kocaeli, Turkey, Monday, May 23, 2022. (AP Photo)
Short Url
Updated 24 May 2022
Follow

Turkey hints at Syria operation amid discussions of NATO enlargement

  • Turkey’s operation is expected to focus on areas where the country is targeted the most by cross-border attacks
  • The announcement comes at a time in which Turkey is vehemently objecting to the NATO membership bids of Sweden and Finland

ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Monday evening an impending military operation into northern Syria to establish a 30 km-deep safe zone along the southern border. 

Turkey’s operation is expected to focus on areas where the country is targeted the most by cross-border attacks. But Erdogan did not go into further detail. 

Turkish forces have launched three major incursions into northern Syria since 2016 and took control of areas along the border against threats from Daesh and the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, listed as a terror group by Turkey. 

The withdrawal of the Syrian Kurdish forces up to 30 km into Syria was part of the Russia-Turkey deal in Sochi. 

The announcement comes at a time in which Turkey is vehemently objecting to the NATO membership bids of Sweden and Finland, citing the two Scandinavian countries’ support for the terror groups and their arms embargoes following Turkey’s previous Syria operation in 2019. 

Although the two countries deny any support given to the terror groups on their soil, Ankara asked Sweden and Finland for the extradition of 33 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and an end to the ongoing military export bans to Turkey. 

Turkey considers the YPG as the Syrian offshoot of the PKK. 

The timing of the announcement, therefore, stirred debate about whether it would be part of a grand bargain between Turkey and the Western alliance to decrease its support for the Syrian Kurdish militants in exchange for Ankara lessening its pressure on the enlargement goals of the organization. 

Noah Ringler, an expert from Georgetown University, thinks the northwestern Syrian city of Tal Rifaat is the most likely target of the operation, while Kobane or Manbij is the next most likely option. 

“I believe Erdogan still seeks a broader deal with US President Joe Biden on NATO enlargement and the purchase of American-made F-16s and would not like to confront US forces further east near Al-Malikiyah,” he told Arab News. 

An operation in Tal Rifaat, situated halfway between Aleppo and the Turkish border, has been on the agenda for years as the YPG seized control in the region. The city houses Kurds who fled Afrin when Turkey carried out an operation there in 2018 to root the YPG out.  

Ankara, however, perceives a threat coming from the Tal Rifaat area, which is believed to be used by Kurdish forces to conduct cross-border attacks on Turkey. 

There have been several fire exchanges between Turkish forces and Syrian Kurdish militants for a couple of months. 

As Tal Rifaat is home to many refugees living in Kilis and Azaz and has limited Russian and Iranian presence, Ringler said that Russia is likely willing to let Turkey attack within certain areas with some pre-conditions, like ensuring the lack of Turkish sanctions on Russian goods and services. 

“Russia may also ask Turkey to put pressure on the PYD (Kurdish Democratic Union Party) to return them to the table with Syrian President Bashar Assad, as talks have stalled,” he added. 

Experts also note that any such operation could take advantage of Russia’s preoccupation with the invasion of Ukraine and US commitments to defend Taiwan against China.  

According to Ringler, Turkey’s drone strikes on the YPG in northeastern Syria have always been satisficing, as elections in Turkey draw near. 

“Erdogan considers taking new steps as vital to distract the attention from domestic issues and divide the opposition over Kurdish and Syrian issues,” he said. 

The details of the operation and the decision to launch it will however be discussed during Turkey’s National Security Council meeting on Thursday.

Whether the operation has or will have the green light from Russia and US is still unclear. 

“Turkish Armed Forces have the capacity to attack all of the above areas, but for political reasons it is likely the best for Erdogan to do sequential operations, threatening additional action closer to next year’s elections and in order to gain concessions from the US, Iran, Russia and the YPG,” said Ringler.

He added: “I think Assad’s forces will fight back like in February 2020, and the extent of Russian air support will be a key indicator of the extent to which Turkey is coordinating with Russia. Assad’s forces are unlikely to give up positions without trying to impose costs on Turkish-backed Syrian armed groups and the Turkish Armed Forces for their presence in Syria.”

According to Ringler, US Congressional elections will also play a role in negotiations with the US, as presidential powers do not allow Biden to lift some of the existing sanctions and Congress remains committed to arms sanctions on Turkey related to its S-400 Russian missile defense purchase and Operation Peace Spring into Syria. 

Currently hosting about 3.7 million refugees from Syria whose presence in the country has increasingly become a hot topic among several opposition parties pledging their immediate repatriation, Ankara has been discussing their resettlement to briquette houses in safe areas along the border. 

The Turkish government is also worried that public anger over the refugees’ widespread presence will dominate the upcoming election round and influence electoral preferences. 

The latest official figures revealed that 400-500 people are returning each week to the safe zones on the Turkey-Syria border. Since 2016, around half a million Syrians have returned to those zones, which are controlled by Ankara-backed groups.  

“The regions they returned to are Jarablus, A’zaz, Marea, Al-Bab, Ras Al-Ayn, and Tal Abyad. These are all safe regions in Syria that we have created,” Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu recently said.

However, the Syrian government considers the presence of safe zones as a kind of “colonialism” and “ethnic cleansing.” Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently urged the international community to stop Ankara from proceeding with its plans for building houses and local infrastructure in safe zones to send 1 million refugees back to their country.  

Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at the New Lines Institute, thinks that the recently announced Turkish military operation in northern Syria is certainly a tactic Ankara has employed to test Russia in Syria amid its intervention in Ukraine. 

“It is also a message Turkey is wishing to send following its opposition to Swedish and Finnish membership in NATO due to grievances related to the PKK, as well as to take advantage of Russian distraction in Ukraine to alter the status quo in Syria and deepen its footprint in the northeast,” she told Arab News. 

Rose, however, does not think the US will offer any public or private green light for this operation, nor will Russia publicly support it.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, in a statement on Tuesday, accused Turkey of “destabilizing the region.”

Navvar Saban, a military analyst at the Omran Center for Strategic Studies in Istanbul, believes there is always an opportunity for Turkey to launch a tactic operation targeting a specific area. 

“The most reasonable targets would be Tal Rifaat and Manbij. I don’t expect any operation on the eastern side of Syria. Turkey should concentrate its efforts and forces on controlling the strategic points on the M4 highway in Idlib that became a de facto frontier between Turkish-controlled pockets and Kurdish forces,” he told Arab News. 

Erdogan’s announcement also came a day before diplomatic delegations from Sweden and Finland landed in Ankara on Tuesday to discuss their NATO membership bid, where Turkey is expected to present some files on PKK activities during their meeting with the Turkish Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin and Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal on Wednesday. 


Hezbollah says launched drones ahead of ceasefire at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv

Updated 34 min 33 sec ago
Follow

Hezbollah says launched drones ahead of ceasefire at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched drones at “sensitive military targets” in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, after deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut and as news of a ceasefire deal was announced.
“In response to the targeting of the capital Beirut and the massacres committed by the Israeli enemy against civilians,” Hezbollah launched “drones at a group of sensitive military targets in the city of Tel Aviv and its suburbs,” the group said in a statement.
 

 


What does the US-brokered truce ending Israel-Hezbollah fighting include?

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (AP)
Updated 27 November 2024
Follow

What does the US-brokered truce ending Israel-Hezbollah fighting include?

  • The Lebanese army would deploy troops to south of the Litani to have around 5,000 soldiers there, including at 33 posts along the border with Israel, a Lebanese security source told Reuters

BEIRUT: Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah are set to implement a ceasefire early on Wednesday as part of a US-proposed deal for a 60-day truce to end more than a year of hostilities.
The text of the deal has not been published and Reuters has not seen a draft.
US President Joe Biden announced the deal, saying it was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities. Israel’s security cabinet has approved it and it will be put to the whole cabinet for review. Lebanon Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the deal, which Hezbollah approved last week.
The agreement, negotiated by US mediator Amos Hochstein, is five pages long and includes 13 sections, according to a senior Lebanese political source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Here is a summary of its key provisions.

HALT TO HOSTILITIES
The halt to hostilities is set to begin at 4 a.m local time (0200 GMT) on Wednesday, Biden announced, with both sides expected to cease fire by Wednesday morning.
The senior Lebanese source said Israel was expected to “stop carrying out any military operations against Lebanese territory, including against civilian and military targets, and Lebanese state institutions, through land, sea and air.”
All armed groups in Lebanon — meaning Hezbollah and its allies — would halt operations against Israel, the source said.

ISRAELI TROOPS WITHDRAW
Two Israeli officials said the Israeli military would withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days. Biden said the troops would gradually pull out and civilians on both sides would be able to return home.
Lebanon had earlier pushed for Israeli troops to withdraw as quickly as possible within the truce period, Lebanese officials told Reuters. They now expect Israeli troops to withdraw within the first month, the senior Lebanese political source said.
A Lebanese official told Reuters the deal included language that preserved both Lebanon’s and Israel’s rights to self-defense.

HEZBOLLAH PULLS NORTH, LEBANESE ARMY DEPLOYS
Hezbollah fighters will leave their positions in southern Lebanon to move north of the Litani River, which runs about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border with Israel.
Their withdrawal will not be public, the senior Lebanese political source said. He said the group’s military facilities “will be dismantled” but it was not immediately clear whether the group would take them apart itself, or whether the fighters would take their weapons with them as they withdrew.
The Lebanese army would deploy troops to south of the Litani to have around 5,000 soldiers there, including at 33 posts along the border with Israel, a Lebanese security source told Reuters.
“The deployment is the first challenge — then how to deal with the locals that want to return home,” given the risks of unexploded ordnance, the source said.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israeli strikes on Lebanon, many of them from south Lebanon. Hezbollah sees the return of the displaced to their homes as a priority, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told Reuters.
Tens of thousands displaced from northern Israel are also expected to return home.

MONITORING MECHANISM
One of the sticking points in the final days leading to the ceasefire’s conclusion was how it would be monitored, Lebanon’s deputy speaker of parliament Elias Bou Saab told Reuters.
A pre-existing tripartite mechanism between the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), the Lebanese army and the Israeli army would be expanded to include the US and France, with the US chairing the group, Bou Saab said.
Israel would be expected to flag possible breaches to the monitoring mechanism, and France and the US together would determine whether a violation had taken place, an Israeli official and a Western diplomat told Reuters.
A joint statement by Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron said France and the US would work together to ensure the deal is applied fully.

UNILATERAL ISRAELI STRIKES
Israeli officials have insisted that the Israeli army would continue to strike Hezbollah if it identified threats to its security, including transfers of weapons and military equipment to the group.
An Israeli official told Reuters that US envoy Amos Hochstein, who negotiated the agreement, had given assurances directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could carry out such strikes on Lebanon.
Netanyahu said in a televised address after the security cabinet met that Israel would strike Hezbollah if it violated the deal.
The official said Israel would use drones to monitor movements on the ground in Lebanon.
Lebanese officials say that provision is not in the deal that it agreed, and that it would oppose any violations of its sovereignty.

 


Israeli strikes hit north Lebanon crossings with Syria for first time, minister says

Updated 27 November 2024
Follow

Israeli strikes hit north Lebanon crossings with Syria for first time, minister says

  • Syria says 6 killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon border crossings

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes late on Tuesday targeted Lebanon’s three northern border crossings with Syria for the first time, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters.
The strikes came moments after US President Joe Biden announced that a ceasefire would come into effect at 4:00 a.m. local time (0200 GMT) on Wednesday to halt hostilities between Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel.
Hamieh said it was not immediately clear whether the roads had been cut off as a result of the strikes. Israeli raids on Lebanon’s eastern crossings in recent weeks had already sealed off those routes into Syria.
Syria’s state news agency reported four civilians and two soldiers were killed, and 12 people were wounded including children, women and workers in the Syrian Red Crescent.
The Red Crescent said earlier a volunteer was killed and another was injured in “the aggression that targeted Al-Dabousyeh and Al-Arida crossings ... as they were performing their humanitarian duty of rescuing the wounded early on Wednesday.”
The strike damaged several ambulances and work points, it added in a statement.
Syrian state TV reported the Israeli strike hit the Arida and Dabousieh border crossings with Lebanon.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment. It has previously stated that it targets what it says are Iran-linked sites in Syria as part of a broader campaign to curb the influence of Iran and its ally Hezbollah in the region.
Separately, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Tuesday that it struck an Iranian-aligned militia weapons storage facility in Syria in response to an Iranian-aligned attack against US forces in the country on Monday.


Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war

Updated 27 November 2024
Follow

Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war

  • ACRI accuses Netanyahu govt. of “excessive, unrestrained and illegal use of force” in occupied territory in a new report
  • Says govt. is “implementing profound changes to all aspects of control, most of which are flying under the radar”

LONDON: On Oct. 12 last year, a group of armed settlers and Israeli soldiers drove into the West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq, 10 kilometers east of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

There, they seized and handcuffed three Palestinian men, subjecting them to hours of abuse and violence, later compared by one of the victims to the treatment meted out by rogue US soldiers to prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.

The abuses in Wadi Al-Seeq were led by members of the IDF’s Sfar Hamidbar (Desert Frontier) unit, notorious for recruiting into its ranks violent “hilltop youth” from the illegal farming settlements that are proliferating in the West Bank with the blessing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, which includes, and is dependent on the support of, far-right parties.

“For hours,” as an Israeli newspaper reported on Oct. 21, 2023, the Palestinians “were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed.

“Their captors urinated on two of them and extinguished burning cigarettes on them. There was even an attempt to penetrate one of them with an object.”

Palestinians bound and stripped after being apprehended by IDF soldiers and settlers in the central West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq on October 12, 2023. (The Times of Israel)

Israeli human rights activists who arrived at the scene were also arrested, cuffed, beaten, threatened with death and, like the Palestinians, robbed.

At the time, many in Israel were shocked to read the reports of the joint operation between the IDF and settlers, exposed by the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

But as a new report from an Israeli human rights group makes clear, such events have become commonplace as, under cover of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli government and its agencies have been pursuing the ultimate goal of “realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”

In the report, “One year of war: the collapse of human and civil rights in Israel and the West Bank,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) accuses the government of “excessive, unrestrained, and illegal use of force.”

Furthermore, it says, Netanyahu’s government is “demolishing the judicial system and the civil service with the aim of accumulating unlimited power; increasing the use of force in the West Bank and granting tacit permission for unrestrained settler violence; using force to limit freedom of expression and protest; and systematically violating the rights of detainees and prisoners.”

Israeli settlers march towards the outpost of Eviatar, near the Palestinian village of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)

The list of charges levelled against the government is long, including institutionalized discrimination against Arab society, “unprecedented” infringement of the rights of suspects and prisoners, the “mass armament and creation of untrained forces” of settlers, the “destruction of democratic foundations,” attacks on freedom of expression and “normalization of citizen surveillance and disregard for privacy.”

Legislative steps are being taken with the aim of excluding certain parties from running for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Last month a controversial bill was passed to change the rules for banning individuals or parties from membership of the Knesset if they have “supported terror,” a definition which now includes visiting the family of someone accused of an act of terrorism.

Likud, Netanyahu’s party, has even accused Arab members of the Knesset of supporting terror simply on the ground of their support for Palestinian statehood.

“Depriving a population of the right to protest politically and the right to political representation” is “a very slippery slope,” said Noa Sattath, the CEO of ACRI.

“When there’s no political representation of a minority, then there's a radicalization of that minority.”

IN NUMBERS

  • 733 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.
  • 40 Israelis killed during the same period.
  • 3,340 Palestinians in administrative detention as of last June.
  • 11,800 Palestinians arrested since current conflict erupted.

What the ACRI report exposes on a grand scale, says Sattath, is “the excessive use of power. Of course, we see it in Gaza, and in Lebanon now, but we also see it in the West Bank.

“We also see it being used against Israeli protesters. We’re also seeing it in the treatment of prisoners. In all walks of life, basically, the Israeli government has moved to using excessive power against the different players, rather than making more complicated decisions.”

The headline scandal of the past year is what ACRI describes as “the quiet coup” in the West Bank.

“With public attention focused elsewhere,” says the report, “the government is implementing profound changes to all aspects of control in the West Bank, most of which are flying under the radar.

“In the last two years, the government has made giant strides in advancing policies aimed at accelerating the annexation process of the West Bank, while establishing Jewish supremacy and marginalizing the Palestinian population, all in pursuit of realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”

A member of the Israeli security forces walks past a bulldozer demolishing a house belonging to Palestinians in the southern area of the occupied West Bank on November 6, 2024. (AFP)

The annexation of the West Bank has long been on the agenda, said Sattath, “but the war has given cover and enabled this to happen.

“Basically, they’re creating a new reality on the ground, behind the scenes, without a lot of public scrutiny, without a lot of international discourse on this new reality that they’re manufacturing.”

The Israeli government has, in certain instances, issued statements that aim to distance itself from the violent actions of settlers in the West Bank. Netanyahu has occasionally called for calm and condemned settler attacks on Palestinians, especially after high-profile incidents.

However, ACRI fears that under the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, whose election has been welcomed so enthusiastically by far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, things are only going to get worse.

A member of the Israeli security forces scuffles with a protestor as Palestinian and Israeli peace activists demonstrate at the entrance of Huwara in the occupied West Bank, on March 3, 2023. (AFP)

“I think that the next years are going to be very difficult,” said Sattath.

“The US government is one of the only checks and balances on the behavior of the Israeli government behavior and, even if we would have liked them to be more forceful in the way that they do it, we're very worried that the disappearance of that will have grave implications for the lives of Palestinians, both in Gaza, where the US is currently so involved in the humanitarian aid efforts there, and in the West Bank.”

Disturbingly, she says, Israel is manoeuvring behind the scenes to end the status of the West Bank as an occupied territory under military occupation, which is how it has been defined by international law since the occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967.

A picture shows burnt cars, which were set ablaze by Israeli settlers, in the area of in Al-Lubban Al-Sharqiya in the occupied West Bank on June 21, 2023. (AFP)

“It seems a little strange that an organization like ACRI would be advocating for military occupation,” she said. 

“But under international conventions military occupation gives the protected citizens of that area many different rights and gives the occupiers obligations. 

“Residents in occupied territories cannot be moved. You cannot build on their territory and the occupying force has all sorts of obligations toward them, in terms of humanitarian aid. 

“Now, what the settler movement, through its ministers in the government, is trying to do is erase the military occupation, replacing it with government agencies and officials to facilitate the settlement enterprise.” 

A Palestinian man walks at the village of Khallet Al-Daba, in the occupied West Bank on October 26, 2023, after it was attacked by Israeli settlers. (AFP)

The process began in February 2023 when, despite disquiet among some members of Netanyahu’s government, authority over many civilian issues in the West Bank was stripped from Defense Ministry agency COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) and transferred to Bezalel Smotrich, the religious Zionism leader and finance minister. 

According to a Times of Israel report, the agreement “appears to give the ultranationalist leader sweeping powers over the territory, and allows him to advance his goal of thwarting Palestinian aspirations for a state in the West Bank by enabling the Israeli population there to substantially expand.”

Anti-settlement organizations denounced the agreement, with one, Breaking the Silence, saying it amounted to “legal, de jure annexation,” of the West Bank.

The importance of ACRI’s report, says Sattath, lies in the sheer breadth of abuses by the Israeli government it exposes.

Israeli security forces fire tear gas at Palestinians demonstrating in the village of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)

ACRI, founded in 1972 and the oldest civil and human rights organization in Israel, has been publishing reports on the state of human rights in Israel and the West Bank for decades. But, she says, “we have never published a report showing such a severe and comprehensive deterioration as we have seen over the past year.”

ACRI says it hopes its report “will deepen the public’s understanding of the damage being done to human rights and democratic institutions, and that it will stir the public to action and resistance.”

It added: “Monitoring human rights violation processes is also critical for there to be any hope of correction under a different government and reality.”

 


Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army

Updated 26 November 2024
Follow

Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army

  • Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said sirens sounded across central and northern Israel Tuesday, with three projectiles fired from Lebanon after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his cabinet would vote for a ceasefire.
“Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon,” the military said in a statement. “Three projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory were successfully intercepted by the IAF (Israeli air force).”