From Ramzy Baroud Website
Israel, which has played a precarious role in the Syrian war since 2011, is furious to learn that the future of the conflict is not to its liking.
The six-year-old Syrian war is moving to a new stage, perhaps its final. The Syrian regime is consolidating its control over most of the populated centers, while ISIS is losing ground fast -- and everywhere.
Areas evacuated by the rapidly disintegrated militant group are up for grabs. There are many hotly contested regions sought over by the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and its allies, on the one hand, and the various anti-Assad opposition groups and their supporters, on the other.
With ISIS largely vanquished in Iraq -- at an extremely high death toll of 40,000 people in Mosul alone -- warring parties there are moving west. Shia militias, emboldened by the Iraq victory, have been pushing westward as far as the Iraq-Syria border, converging with forces loyal to the Syrian government on the other side.
Concurrently, first steps at a permanent ceasefire are bearing fruit, compared to many failed attempts in the past.
Following a ceasefire agreement between the United States and Russia on July 7 at the G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, three provinces in southwestern Syria -- bordering Jordan and Israeli-occupied Golan Heights -- are now relatively quiet. The agreement is likely to be extended elsewhere.
The Israeli government has made it clear to the US that it is displeased with the agreement, and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been leading strong efforts to undermine the ceasefire.
Netanyahu's worst fears are, perhaps, actualizing: a solution in Syria that would allow for a permanent Iranian and Hezbollah presence in the country.
In the early phases of the war, such a possibility seemed remote; the constantly changing fortunes in Syria's brutal combat made the discussion altogether irrelevant.
But things have now changed.
Despite assurances to the contrary, Israel has always been involved in the Syria conflict. Israel's repeated claims that "it maintains a policy of non-intervention in Syria's civil war," only fools US mainstream media.
Not only was Israel involved in the war, it also played no role in the aid efforts, nor did it ever extend a helping hand to Syrian refugees.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have perished in the merciless war; many cities and villages were totally destroyed and millions of Syrians become refugees.
While tiny and poor Lebanon has hosted over a million Syrian refugees, every country in the region and many nations around the world have hosted Syrian refugees, as well. Except Israel.
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