Israel Setting Up Military Buffer Zone On Syria Border as Islamic Rebels Depose Assad
Prime Minister Netanyahu says Assad’s collapse a ‘historic day’ for the Middle East.
Israel is setting up a military buffer zone along its northern border with Syria after Islamic rebels captured the capital, Damascus, and forced dictator Bashar Assad to flee the country.
The Israeli military “has deployed forces in the buffer zone and in several other places necessary for its defense, to ensure the safety of the communities of the Golan Heights and the citizens of Israel,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement Sunday.
Israel was not involved in any military operation inside Syria and was focused on defending the country’s border as fighting ensued between various armed factions. “We emphasize that the IDF is not interfering with the internal events in Syria,” the IDF added. “The IDF will continue to operate as long as necessary in order to preserve the buffer zone and defend Israel and its civilians.”
The neighboring Arab nations, Lebanon and Jordan, also fear the conflict spilling over into their territories. “The rapidly developing events have shaken the region. Lebanon said it was closing all its land border crossings with Syria except for one that links Beirut with Damascus. Jordan closed a border crossing with Syria, too,” the Associated Press reported Sunday.
Netanyahu: Assad regime’s collapse a ‘historic day’ for the Middle East
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was cautiously optimistic over the falls of Assad’s tyrannical rule. “This is a historic day for the Middle East,” Netanyahu said in a video address Sunday.
He welcomed the downfall of the Syrian regime, calling it a “central link in Iran’s axis of evil” which includes Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and other regional terrorist proxies. “The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus, offers great opportunity but also is fraught with significant dangers,” the prime minister said.
The Israeli leader offered a “hand of peace” to the Syrian people as the Assad family’s 50-year-long tyranny comes to a crashing end.
This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus, offers great opportunity but also is fraught with significant dangers.
We send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria: to the Druze, to the Kurds, to the… pic.twitter.com/yJZE3AZZJn
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) December 8, 2024
The Jerusalem Post reported the prime minister’s remarks:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood along the Syrian border with Israel on Sunday afternoon, hailing the end of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad’s 14-year rule and claiming Israel’s “blows inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah” had a direct impact on the Syrian revolution.
On a visit to the area near the border with Syria, the prime minister said he had ordered Israeli forces to seize areas in the buffer zone to ensure Israel’s security and said: “We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border.”
Following blows to Assad and supporters Iran and Hezbollah, Netanyahu called the fall of the Assad regime a “historic day in the Middle East,” noting another key player in Iran’s web cutting off.
“The Assad regime is a central link in Iran’s axis of evil – this regime has fallen. This is a direct result of the blows we inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, the main supporters of the Assad regime. This has created a chain reaction throughout the Middle East of all those who want to be free from this oppressive and tyrannical regime,” Netanyahu said.
🚨 Netanyahu in the Golan Heights:
– The Assad regime fell as a direct result of the blows we inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah
-I instructed the IDF to seize the buffer zone with Syria and the controlling positions adjacent to it
– We send a hand of peace to our Druze neighbors… pic.twitter.com/tkS1bswXFc
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) December 8, 2024
Netanyahu also told the hostage families whose loved ones have been languishing in Hamas captivity since October 7, 2023, that the fall of the Iran-backed regime could hasten their release, The Times of Israel reported:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets separately with two hostage family groups in Jerusalem, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents most families, and the Tikva Forum, which represents a hawkish minority of hostage families who have been significantly more supportive of Netanyahu’s handling of the war than the main forum has been.
According to Netanyahu’s office, he tells them that the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria “could help advance a deal to bring back the hostages.”
Russian state media says Moscow granted Assad asylum
Russia admitted that Syrian dictator Assad gave up his hold on power after a 24-year reign and left the country after rebels took Damascus in a lightning offensive.
“Assad has left office and the country after giving orders for there to be a peaceful transfer of power, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday,” Sky News reported Sunday. “The leader’s whereabouts now, as well as those of his wife Asma and their two children, remain unknown,” the UK broadcaster added.
Footage of Syrians tearing down a poster of Soleimani and Nasrallah in front of #Iran’s regime’s embassy in Damascus, #Syria. The #IRGCterrorists Axis of Resistance is crumbling. pic.twitter.com/mp0IsIKyDg
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) December 8, 2024
Assad has fled a country for an ‘unknown destination,’ officials of the fallen Syrian regime disclosed. “Two senior army officers said Assad had boarded a plane early on Sunday in Damascus for an unknown destination,” Reuters reported Sunday afternoon. “Assad has not spoken in public since the sudden rebel advance a week ago, when insurgents seized northern Aleppo in a surprise attack before marching into a succession of cities as frontlines crumbled.”
🇷🇺 Russia has granted Bashar al-Assad and his family asylum, according to Russian state media, citing a Kremlin source.
Read more here ⤵️https://t.co/f29HSyen6i pic.twitter.com/aQzLbCXA0I
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) December 8, 2024
Russian state media confirmed Sunday evening the Moscow has granted Asylum to Assad and members of his family.
Germany’s DW TV reported:
Russian media outlets including news agency Tass have reported, citing unnamed Kremlin sources, that Bashar Assad is in Moscow.
“Assad and members of his family arrived in Moscow. Russia, based on humanitarian considerations, granted them asylum,” Tass quoted an unnamed Kremlin source as saying.
Israel deploys troops in ‘buffer zone’ along Syria border
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Netanyahu sends greetings:
– We send a hand of peace to our Druze neighbors in Syria and also to the Kurds, Christians, and Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel.
Non-classified estimates of Syria’s Sarin gas stockpile were measured in hundreds of thousands of tons. I hope to God someone – IDF or CIA – has good visibility on where those stockpiles are. Israel will be served well by the natural barrier that is the Golan and they seem determine to expand that advantage by taking strategic pieces of property in Syria. But, the last thing they need is that gas falling into the hands of true believers (presuming it hasn’t happened already).
Attention Syrian refugees. You are free to return to Syrian now.
Israel has been very busy blowing things up in Syria in the last few days. Word is it is destroying all sorts of weapons that it doesn’t want passed on to the new generation in Syria. The photos and videos are impressive.
Linky or it never happened.
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1865876702158582257
Thanks T!
Try this. It’s from Abu Ali Express (English) on Telegram. I recommend the channel. https://t.me/englishabuali/41005
Nice!
For anti-Israel Arabs and Iran’s leadership Oct. 7, 2023.has metamorphosed from a day of joy to a day of gloom and doom. Israel in the.face of fierce opposition has severely damaged Hamas, although that cancer is still not fully extirpated, and it has much weakened Hezbollah by having wiped out its leadership. Now Iran’s ally in Damascus is gone, and assuming the new rulers in Damascus remain hostile to Iran, the Solemani vision of encircling Israel to destroy it, has disappeared. Whether Hezbollah will wither away by having been cut off from its land-based supply line to Iran remains to be seen. Oh, how Khamenei must long to go back to Oct. 6, 2023.
It’s the quintessential lesson in FAFO.
Israel should take advantage of any opportunity to appropriate defensive positions. In the meantime, Italy’s La Stampa claims Assad and family are in Moscow.
At the moment this is not clear. The plane that was supposedly carrying Assad disappeared from radar in northwestern Syria, and has presumably crashed. Whether Assad was on the plane and whether it crashed remain to be determined.
Photos of Assad in today’s Pravda or it isn’t true…
An old threat is gone, surely a new threat will arise, the weaponry being the most tangible example, but the rise of Syrian Taliban looms. At least now there are actors better able to address these new threats. But it will take change of regime in Iran to create any real semblance of peace, if at all, and that’s a growing possibility as Trump and Netanyahu, among others, tighten the screws.
Russia had 12 outposts along the Golan border. Has anyone heard anything about the fate of those soldiers? Did they get out?
Maybe Assad can return to optometrist practice, in Moscow. Probably won’t have to, with the billions of dollars that he and his family have pilfered from the Syrian state treasury. Make the Biden crime family appear small-time.
While campuses erupt in hatred and idiots burn Israeli flags, over 600,000 dead in Syria’s civil war.
Yeah, but they weren’t killed by Jews, so they don’t count. Like the black victims of black criminals, whose lives apparently don’t matter as much as those of black criminals killed by white policemen (or policemen of any race, really).
Ophthalmologist, not optometrist.
Would you let someone with his moral character do surgery on you?!
We really do not know the full scope of Biden family crimes.
You mean all the billions Putin now has.
To think, none of this would have happened without the helping hand of Hamas 😂😂
I think the ICC and the ICJ and Amnesty International and the South African Government are going to try to bring war crimes charges against the IDF for failing to prevent destruction of property in Syria.
caused by HTS.
And also for University of Alabama not being selected for the upcoming College Football Playoff.
Has anybody asked that EXHILARATED Cornell “professor” how exhilarated recent events in Syria have made him feel?
Has anybody asked Cornell Professor Exhilarated whether he:
-knows what Syria is
-knows where Syria is
I’m so confused by all of this. I can’t see straight! Is the fall of Assad a good thing or a bad thing? Especially in light of the fact it was Islamic rebels that made him fall. I just don’t know. Could someone please elaborate?
And no, this is not one of my ironic or sarcastic comments for once.
His fall is a good thing. The rebels’ victory is a bad thing. We can celebrate the first while lamenting the second, even though they are two sides of the same event.
Vijeta, how about a story about the release of tortured prisoners at Sednaya prison in Damascus? The world should see what went on there. Rebels have spent days trying to dig people out of underground prison cells.
Notice how little reaction the world press has had to Israel occupying the buffer area? Perhaps that will change in the next few days/weeks but right now it’s under the radar. Interesting.
Maybe install some of S Korean robo-turrets.