Israel Pushed Into Syria - Moscow Just Showed There’s a Price

Benjamin Netanyahu wandering the Syrian countryside like he owned the place has backfired, as Russia are now taking out a lease... Right, so Israel has spent months treating the Quneitra frontier like a bit of empty countryside nobody would miss, pushing in a little further each week and assuming Syria would just swallow it because the new leadership has been too busy rebuilding a state in its Al-Qaeda castoff image to fight over every inch of soil. And for a while that was true. Syria tried playing the good diplomatic citizen after sanctions were lifted, tried talking, tried keeping the West onside, and what did it get for that restraint? The Israeli prime minister strolling straight into the UN-monitored buffer zone with cameras rolling, as if the 1974 agreement between the two states was something he could wipe off with a spit polish. Here we go again and all of that when it comes to Israel. But when Russia suddenly reappeared in Quneitra days later, touring the line and preparing posts, it wasn’t nostalgia. It was Syria finally saying: “If Israel won’t respect the border, someone else will.” Right, so the simplest way to start is by saying what’s actually happening on Israel’s northern frontier without all the diplomatic varnish that’s been spread all over it. The border inside Quneitra isn’t stable. It hasn’t been stable for months. It hasn’t been treated as stable by the one state that insists it’s the victim of everyone else’s instability. Israel has been pushing deeper and deeper into Syrian territory, advancing into villages on the Syrian side of the line, setting up new points of control, and treating the 1974 Disengagement Agreement like it’s a helpful suggestion rather than an obligation. Everyone can see this because it’s happening in broad daylight.