Israel asks Syrian rebels not to harm Druze - Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front is not among rebel groups receiving Israeli humanitarian aid, PM Benjamin Netanyahu tells Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee • Israeli Druze leader: We will make sure our brothers in Syria are not harmed.

 

Members of Israel's Druze community carry flags near the Israel-Syria border in the Golan Heights, June 16 | Photo credit: Reuters

Israel said on Monday it had made humanitarian aid to select Syrian rebel groups on its border conditional on their undertaking not to harm the Druze minority in the country's civil war.

The Nusra Front, an al-Qaida offshoot hostile to Syrian Druze, was not among the rebels getting Israeli help, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers.

Enraged by rumors Nusra fighters might be among the hundreds of Syrians admitted to Israel for medical treatment, Druze groups last week attacked two ambulances bringing in wounded Syrians to Israel, killing one.

The Druze in Syria have long been loyal to President Bashar Assad, and their brethren in Israel have been lobbying the Israeli government to safeguard the community.

Israel, however, has sought to keep out of the more than four-year-long insurgency against Assad, an old foe who, it fears, may be toppled by more hostile Islamist militants.

Briefing reporters on Monday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said that, from the outset, Israel knew there were rebels among those it was helping and "placed two conditions on this aid -- that terrorist groups not approach the fence, and that the Druze not be touched."

He was referring to the southern Syrian Druze village of Hader on which rebels have encroached, setting off solidarity protests among the Druze community in Israel, which has influence in the Israeli military and government.

Israel has said it has also sent food and water across the border.

Another Israeli defense official said that while Israel has not refused medical treatment to any Syrian approaching its lines, "later, when it became clear that they were rebels, we made sure that they understood we expected our conditions to be kept."

Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that Israel does not assist Nusra Front, the panel's spokesman said.

The defense official said Israel has engaged mainly with non-jihadi rebels like the Free Syrian Army. The "terrorists" referred to by Ya'alon were radical Islamists who are bent on attacking Israel no less than on toppling Assad, the official told Reuters.

But he allowed that telling them apart from other armed factions "can be difficult."

Ya'alon said Israel's conditions were being upheld, but that the June 22 Druze attack on the ambulance that left one Syrian casualty dead and another seriously wounded may have backfired by "spurring calls for revenge against the Druze in Hader."

Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the religious leader of Israel's Druze, said the community had no desire for Israel to get involved in the Syrian war "but we will do all it takes to make sure our Druze brothers are not harmed."

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=26553

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