The neoconservative Washington Free Beacon is reporting that the Israeli air force has attacked a Syrian government-controlled missile base near Syria’s border with Lebanon. The Beacon cites a pro-rebel website that claims:
Israeli planes breached Lebanese and Syrian airspace and bombed the Syrian regime’s 155th Brigade [base] in the Qutayfa area, destroying a number of missile warehouses.
If the report is accurate it would suggest that Israel is attacking military facilities of the Syrian government to the benefit of ISIS and the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, at least according to the latest battle map released by the Institute for the Study of War (when coordinated with a Google map search for Qutayfah, Syria).
Israel has routinely violated Syrian airspace to bomb Syrian territory and uses any stray rocket fire into Israel-occupied Golan Heights as a pretext to hit Syrian government positions inside the country.
Recently Israel has been forced to back down from its routine flights over Syrian airspace by the arrival of Russian fighters, and after at least one Israeli close call with sophisticated Russian fighter jets a hotline was reportedly set up for the two countries to avoid any clashes in the area.
Though these reports of Israel hitting Syrian government assets to the benefit of ISIS in the area should be taken with a grain of salt, if true this would mark yet another very volatile variable in an already very complicated and dangerous part of the world. If the Russians are busy bombing ISIS and al-Nusra positions in the area north of Damascus toward Aleppo, how will Moscow take to Tel Aviv making it difficult for Syrian ground forces to take advantage on the ground of their operations in the air?
