The emerging fait accompli seems very convenient to Israel, creating positive strategic benefits for the Hebrew state and arming it with a pretext not to withdraw the IOF from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian territories.
In an analysis paper published by The Saban Center at Brookings in November 2012, Itamar Rabinovich wrote that, "Clearly, the uncertainty in Syria has put the question of the Golan Heights on hold indefinitely. It may be a long time until Israel can readdress the prospect of giving the Golan back to Damascus."
Moreover, according to Rabinovich, "the Syrian conflict has the potential to bring the damaged Israeli -- Turkish relationship closer to normalcy " they can find common ground in seeking to foster a stable post -- Assad government in Syria."
The hostile Turkish insistence on toppling the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, the concentration of the IS and other rebel forces in the north of the country and in central, eastern and southern Syria are diverting the potential and focus of the Syrian Arab Army northward and inward, away from the western front with the Israeli occupying power on the Golan Heights.
The protracted war on the Syrian government is depleting its army in manpower and materially. Rebuilding the Syrian army and the devastated Syrian infrastructure will preoccupy the country for a long time to come and defuse any military threat to Israel for an extended time span.
On the Palestinian front, the rise of the IS has made fighting it the top U.S. priority in the Middle East, which led Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to several U.S. administrations on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, to warn in Foreign Policy early in September that the rise of the IS would pose "a serious setback to Palestinian hopes of statehood."
The expected fallback internally of the post -- war Syria would "hopefully" relieve Israel of the Syrian historical support for the Palestinian anti -- Israeli occupation movements, at least temporarily.
Netanyahu on Sunday opened a cabinet meeting by explicitly using the IS as a pretext to evade the prerequisites of making peace. Israel "stands " as a solitary island against the waves of Islamic extremism washing over the entire Middle East," he said, adding: "To force upon us" a timeframe for a withdrawal from the Israeli -- occupied Palestinian territories, as proposed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN Security Council, "will bring the radical Islamic elements to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and to the heart of Jerusalem. We will not allow this."
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