Israel gives cover and opened a corridor for Jabhat al-Nusra along the Golan height demarcation line to reach south Lebanon and the southern approaches to Damascus.
There seems to be no concern in Tel Aviv that one day Jabhat al-Nusra could turn against Israel too. That is somewhat astonishing as both Hizbullah and Hamas started with Israeli support as counterweights to the Palestinian Liberation Organization only to later become the most capable foes of the Israeli occupation forces. One might have thought that Israeli strategists had learned from such foolishness.
But obviously they have not and now their lobby in the United States, here in form of the Washington Institute, supports that dumb policy by calling for further support for the Al-Qaida affiliate:
The risk of empowering an al Qaida affiliate is a small price to pay for Nusra’s contributions on the battlefield, said Jeffrey White, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who’s now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.
But while the White House Syria policy is foolish enough to continue its feud against the Syrian president Assad it is unlikely to give direct support, silently or openly, to a designated part of Al-Qaeda.
That would be of no help anyway. Jabhat al-Nusra recently lost several hundred of its fighters. These left their positions in Idleb and Aleppo and went to Raqqa in east Syria to join the Islamic State. This again enabled the Syrian army to regain control over several villages east of Damascus and to now close the ring around the insurgency held parts of Aleppo. Cut off from resupply and under constant bombardment those parts will likely fall within a few weeks.
Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama blog.
