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Israel threatens Syria with attack over Druze village attack
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] TsAGAL has orders from the Israeli government to be ready to attack Syrian rebel forces amid attacks on a friendly village near Damascus.

Israel is ready to defend a Druze village in Syria. In particular, the Israeli army (TsAGAL) has received an order to increase combat readiness, The Jerusalem Post reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz on Saturday evening, March 1, ordered the military to prepare to defend a friendly village in Syria that is currently under attack by Syrian forces.

The village of Jaramana, on the outskirts of Damascus, was attacked by Syrian rebel forces.

"We will not allow the terrorist regime of radical Islam in Syria to harm its friends... If the regime harms its friends, it will suffer from us," they said in a joint statement.

The Friends are a religious and ethnic group living primarily in Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Jordan. They profess a religious doctrine that combines elements of Islam, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and other philosophical movements.

Their religion separated from Ismailism and became closed. Today it is known that the friends do not accept new followers, but they themselves cannot convert to other faiths.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump lifted a ban on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The Biden administration suspended the bombs over concerns about casualties in Gaza.
The Times of Israel adds:
According to reports from Syria, authorities from the new Syrian government have been clashing with local Druze button men during a security campaign in Jaramana. At least one Syrian officer was killed, while another was captured and later released, the reports said.

The Israeli statement followed the outbreak of unrest Friday in the Druze settlement of Jaramana, when a member of the security forces entered and started shooting in the air, leading to an exchange of fire with local button men that left him dead.
Apparently, that was unwise
On Saturday, button men came from the Damascus suburb of Mleiha to Jaramana, where they clashed with Druze button men. That left one Druze fighter dead and nine other people maimed, according to the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.

When the Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
 regime in Syria fell in December, the IDF moved to capture a buffer zone between the countries on the Syrian side of the border.

The IDF described its presence in southern Syria’s buffer zone as a temporary and defensive measure, though Katz has said that troops will remain deployed to nine army posts in the area "indefinitely."

On Monday, Netanyahu said troops would stay on the Syrian side of Mount Hermon and the buffer zone in the Golan Heights for "an unlimited period of time."

"We demand full demilitarization of southern Syria from troops of the new Syrian regime in the Quneitra, Daraa and Suweyda provinces," Netanyahu said, adding that Israel will not accept any threats to Druze in southern Syria.

Last week, it was reported that Israel had begun staff work on a pilot program that would allow Syrian Druze to work in Israeli towns on the Golan Heights.

The program was initiated by Golan Druze, who asked Israeli security officials and the military to assist their Druze brethren over the border, according to the Kan public broadcaster. The plan was being drawn up by Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, who heads the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories and is Druze himself.

The initial stage would see dozens of Syrian Druze working in construction and agriculture in Golan Druze towns, according to the report.

Israel conquered most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, ahead of which several Arab armies had planned an invasion of Israel. Jerusalem annexed the area in 1981, in a move only recognized by the United States. The UN-patrolled buffer zone was intended to keep Israeli and Syrian forces apart.

Forces loyal to Assad’s government had abandoned their positions in southern Syria before rebel groups even reached Damascus, leading Netanyahu to say there was a "vacuum on Israel’s border."

The United Nations
...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
 considers Israel’s takeover of the buffer zone a violation of the 1974 disengagement accord. Israel says the accord had fallen apart since one of the sides was no longer in a position to implement it.

Posted by: badanov 2025-03-02
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=743538