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Israeli officials have been holding talks in Jordan with Syrian
opposition officials “in advance of a possible Israeli-U.S. operation in
Syria to protect the Golan Heights,” Western intelligence sources
reported Tuesday, Jan. 1. There was no further information about this
operation or how rebel commanders were involved in military plans “to
protect the Golan Heights.”
Altogether, the goings-on on the
Israeli and Jordanian borders with Syria are in deep hush. But European
intelligence sources, some of them French and Russian, reveal nightly
clashes taking place between US, Jordanian, Israeli special forces and
Syrian rebels, on the one hand, and Syrian special forces, on the other.
debkafile’s military sources disclose what they are fighting for:
1. Each of the four is jockeying both for control of the buffer
strips along those borders and for keeping their opposite numbers from
establishing intelligence-gathering posts there. US forces, the IDF and
the Jordanian army have a major tactical interest in keeping Syrian
observation posts from settling in the border sectors, where they would
be in position to mark out military and civilian targets if the Syrian
conflict spilled over.
2. The Assad regime has two special interests in gaining a foothold in Jordan’s border area.
The
first is to block the path of Syrian rebels heading back into the
country and joining the various warfronts. At least five military
facilities in Jordan are training special units of the Syrian
opposition. They are managed by American, British, French, Czech and
Polish military instructors. They are imparting tactics for capturing
Syrian military chemical weapons caches and combating Syrian units armed
with chemical or biological weapons.
Some of the rebel trainees
return to Syria when they graduate; others are attached to units
standing by in Jordan in case the Syrian conflict slides into
hostilities with Israel and Jordan.
The second is back-up for the
spy and sabotage networks the Assad government is running in Jordan’s
refugee camps – just as they are in Turkey. Jordan houses some 60,000
Syrian refugees, most of them in the big Zaatari camp on the Syrian
border. To facilitate communication with its undercover networks and the
free passage of information, instructions and funds, Syria needs
control over both sides of the common border.
Monday, Jordan
imposed a blackout on the capture of four Syrian soldiers in the zone
between the two countries. The security spokesman in Amman revealed only
that they were unarmed and being interrogated - but not whether they
were entering the kingdom or on their way out. Earlier that day, a
senior Jordanian military spokesman warned of an attempt to expand the
Syrian war into Jordan. He did not attribute the attempt to any party.
Military
sources in Moscow are more forthcoming about happenings on Syria’s
southern borders. Tuesday, Jan. 1, those sources reported that the
Syrian army had repulsed a Syrian rebel assault from Jordan. They added
that “Syrian border police had also seized a large pile of weapons, some
of them Israeli-made, designated for the Free Syrian Army in the
southern city of Deraa.
3. Extensive preparations are secretly
afoot by US special forces, the IDF and the Turkish and Jordanian armies
ready for President Bashar Assad to hand down the order to his army
chiefs to launch a chemical war offensive on the military concentrations
of Syrian rebels and their allies in the lands neighboring on Syria.
Jordan’s training facilities for rebels are seen as likely to be Assad’s
initial targets. Western military sources explain that, for this
purpose, the Syrian ruler requires maximum control of Jordan’s borders,
including the section abutting the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.
The
London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper reported that, when Israel
officials met Syrian opposition commanders in Jordan this week, they
asked for help to locate the remains of Eli Cohen, one of Israel’s most
celebrated spies. He was caught and publicly hanged on May 18, 1965
after an epic career. For years, Cohen, posing as a wealthy Arab
businessman, gained the confidence of Syrian officials at the highest
levels of government and managed to obtain its secret war and political
plans.
http://www.debka.com/article/22647/