Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, right, with Iran’s FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Syria has avoided getting embroiled in the Gaza war, experts said, despite a strike on Iran’s Damascus consulate, blamed on Israel, that threatened to ignite a regional conflagration.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is seeking to strike a delicate balancing act between Russia and Iran, which have propped it up during 13 years of civil war and helped it reclaim lost territory.

Syria is part of the so-called Axis of Resistance — an alliance of Iran-backed groups that has launched attacks on the Islamic republic’s arch-foe Israel or its alleged assets since October. But its other main ally Russia maintains diplomatic ties with Israel and has pushed for stability in Syria’s south, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

‘Clear warning’

“The Israelis clearly warned Assad that if Syria was used against them they would destroy his regime,” said a Western diplomat who requested anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the media. “Russia and the United Arab Emirates have urged (Mr. Assad) to stay away from the conflict,” said Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute.

Last year, Syria returned to the Arab fold, seeking better ties with wealthy Gulf states, in hopes they can help fund reconstruction — although Western sanctions are likely to deter investment. Syria appears to have heeded Russia and the UAE’s call, and its border with the Golan Heights remains relatively calm despite a handful of strikes launched by Hezbollah-allied fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor says that since the start of the Gaza war only 26 rocket attacks from Syria have targeted the Golan. “Assad hopes the Arabs and the West will compensate him for his restraint, and the Russians are pushing him towards this path,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel was “one step away from victory” in the Gaza war and vowed there would be no truce until Hamas frees all hostages.

He was speaking in a cabinet meeting marking six months of the war that broke out on October 7 after an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas militants.

“We are one step away from victory,” Netanyahu said. “But the price we paid is painful and heartbreaking.”

Speaking as truce talks were expected to resume in Cairo with international mediators, he said: “There will be no ceasefire without the return of hostages. It just won’t happen.”

He stressed that “Israel is ready for a deal, Israel is not ready to surrender”.

“Instead of international pressure being directed at Israel, which only causes Hamas to harden its positions, the pressure of the international community should be directed against Hamas. This will advance the release of the hostages.”

Israel has faced a storm of international outrage over the killing of seven aid workers of the US-based food charity World Central Kitchen in a Gaza air strike on April 1.

US President Joe Biden in a phone call with Netanyahu on Thursday demanded an “immediate ceasefire” and hinted at making US support for Israel conditional on curtailing the killing of civilians and improving humanitarian conditions.

Netanyahu meanwhile accused Iran of being behind several attacks against Israel “through its proxies”.

“Anyone who hurts us or plans to hurt us — we will hurt him. We put this principle into practice, all the time and in recent days,” Netanyahu added.

Fears that the war in Gaza could spread have intensified after Iran vowed to hit back for the killing of seven of its Revolutionary Guards in an air strike Monday on the consular annex of its embassy in Damascus.

Iran’s leaders have pledged retaliation, and the leader of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, has called the consulate strike a “turning point”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A top Hamas police commander met in mid-March with the heads of a Gaza clan who’d been commandeering aid meant for hungry Palestinians. He told them to stop taking the shipments or they’d be killed. A week later, that commander was killed – by Israeli troops.

The Israelis weren’t acting at the clan’s request. Rather, all three – Hamas, clans and the Israeli military – are engaged in a bloody battle for control of north Gaza and aid distribution, making an already troubled process more dangerous and unreliable. Famine is a threat, and people are beginning to die of hunger, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The dead commander, Fayeq al-Mabhouh, had organized a safe route so that those who’d been desperately making bread from animal feed got wheat flour, according to a senior Hamas official and several others on the ground, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Israeli troops killed several others working with Mabhouh, Gazans say, and the safe route died with them.

Israeli military officials acknowledge killing Mabhouh and colleagues during their operation in Shifa Hospital, along with almost 200 other Hamas operatives, but say it had nothing to do with aid. “We are at war against Hamas, he was a top Hamas terrorist and therefore was killed,” said Major Nir Dinar, a spokesperson.

International aid groups are also central players in Gaza and in frequent conflict with Israel. UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is essentially a Palestinian organization that Israel is trying to shut down on charges that it’s too cozy with Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the US and European Union.

A number of governments have stopped funding UNRWA because of those charges, and UNRWA said last week that although it’s best positioned to get aid to those in need, Israel is stopping it from doing so, worsening hunger and suffering. While everywhere in the coastal strip is in need of food, the north is the most dire.

A recent UN-backed report said famine is imminent in northern Gaza where 70% of the population is on the brink of starvation. Some two dozen people, including babies, have died from starvation in the north, the Hamas-run health ministry says. This is why many, including the US, are seeking an immediate cease-fire. Israel says it must finish the destruction of Hamas and that the aid difficulty isn’t its fault.

Some aid groups have accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon in its war against Hamas, which began on Oct. 7 when Hamas operatives broke into Israel, killing, abusing and abducting hundreds. Israel’s retaliatory war has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to Hamas officials who don’t distinguish between civilians and fighters.

The International Rescue Committee said in a statement that “US-funded humanitarian assistance has been consistently and arbitrarily denied by the Israeli authorities.”

A spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in response to queries from Bloomberg, said, “Between March 1 and 15, every fifth humanitarian mission to the north was denied access. This is in addition to delays, impediments and multiple dangers, including live fire. The Israeli authorities have impeded the import of items critically needed to save lives in Gaza, including generators to power medical operations.

Shimon Freedman, a spokesperson for the Israeli military’s civilian affairs department, denied the accusations, saying Israel has been facilitating aid into northern Gaza but international aid groups haven’t increased the number of trucks, workers or working hours as needed.

He added, “It is absolutely not true that we stop generators from going in. Some have been delivered by our soldiers to hospitals. We prioritize water, food and shelter equipment.”

His department issued a rebuttal to the UN-backed report on starvation, saying it “contains multiple factual and methodological flaws, some of them serious.” The rebuttal adds, “We outright reject any allegations according to which Israel is purposefully starving the civilian population in Gaza.”

In recent days, Gazans in the southern city of Rafah say some prices have dropped dramatically. Frozen chicken, which used to cost 80 shekels ($22) per kilo has fallen to 20 shekels.

Khaled al-Hams, who runs a charity in Gaza, said one of the biggest problems is that farmland is located next to the border with Israel which has been off-limits since the war.

“The lands are inaccessible, the sea is closed to fishermen and Gaza relies on food that is coming in the form of aid shipments which are slow,” he said, adding that Hamas “has not managed the crisis efficiently.”

Shira Efron, a policy adviser at Israel Policy Forum, a liberal US-based group, and former consultant to Israel’s Defense Ministry, said the battle over aid is a proxy for a battle over control. “If you have aid, you have power,” she said, “so there are unintended consequences from the fight to control it.”

She said foreign groups and the UN are right that Israeli inspections of aid trucks are a major bottleneck. “Israel closes the crossings at 4 every day and for Shabbat and holidays,” she said. She added that Israel’s complaints about a lack of trucks and drivers from aid groups are also valid.

Israel says its job is to “facilitate” the aid, not to provide and distribute it – that’s the role of aid organizations. But Efron said international humanitarian law requires the occupying army to get the aid to the people.

“The overall responsibility for aid coming in is on Israel,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder speaks at the Pentagon on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023 in Washington. The U.S. military launched airstrikes early Friday on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pentagon said.
| Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. military launched airstrikes early Friday, October 27, 2023 on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pentagon said, in retaliation for a slew of drone and missile attacks against U.S. bases and personnel in the region that began early last week.

The U.S. strikes reflect the Biden administration’s determination to maintain a delicate balance. The U.S. wants to hit Iranian-backed groups suspected of targeting the U.S. as strongly as possible to deter future aggression, possibly fueled by Israel’s war against Hamas, while also working to avoid inflaming the region and provoking a wider conflict.

According to the Pentagon, there have been at least 12 attacks on U.S. bases and personnel in Iraq and four in Syria since Oct. 17. Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said 21 U.S. personnel were injured in two of those assaults that used drones to target al-Asad Airbase in Iraq and al-Tanf Garrison in Syria.

In a statement, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the “precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17.”

He said President Joe Biden directed the narrowly tailored strikes “to make clear that the United States will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests.” And he added that the operation was separate and distinct from Israel’s war against Hamasa.

Mr. Austin said the U.S. does not seek a broader conflict, but if Iranian proxy groups continue, the U.S. won’t hesitate to take additional action to protect its forces.

People inspect inside a church within the premises of Al-Ahli hospital where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, on October 18, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Hamas-controlled interior ministry said several displaced people who had taken shelter at a church compound in the Gaza Strip have been killed and injured after an Israeli strike late Thursday.

The strike left a “large number of martyrs and injured” at the compound of a Greek Orthodox church, the ministry said.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, Day 13 LIVE updates here

Witnesses told AFP the strike appeared to have been aimed at a target close to the place of worship where many Gaza residents had taken refuge as the war raged in the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli army when contacted told AFP it was checking the reported strike.

A Nepalese woman welcomes her daughter who is evacuated from Israel, at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, on October 13, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

A group of 254 Nepali students rescued from the strife-torn Israel and led by Foreign Minister N. P. Saud arrived in Kathmandu on October 13.

A Nepal Airlines flight that took off from Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on October 12 landed at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu this morning after a stopover in Dubai.

Speaking to the media at the airport, Foreign Minister Saud, who flew to Israel a day before to facilitate the rescue mission, said the remaining Nepalis who have requested repatriation would be rescued soon.

Why did Hamas launch a surprise attack on Israel? | Analysis

The Minister said 557 Nepalis had provided their details in response to a request from the Embassy of Nepal in Tel Aviv to those wishing to return to Nepal or relocate to safer places.

“Out of the 557 Nepalis, 503 had applied to return to Nepal and among them 254 have returned home today with us,” he was quoted as saying by the Himalayan Times newspaper.

Minister Saud also said that 54 Nepalis who had requested to be relocated from risky areas have been shifted to safer zones in Israel.

Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a barrage of air strikes in Southern Israel on Saturday which killed 10 Nepali students. Six students were rescued and one went missing.

“A search continues for Bipin Joshi who has gone missing following the attacks. We will share the information as soon as we get additional information on this,” Minister Saud said.

“The Israeli side has stated that it will take some time for handing over the bodies as it is required to complete the legal process and keep separate details of each and every deceased, and the number of bodies in Israel is currently very high,” he said, requesting the families and relatives of the deceased Nepalis to have patience.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there were 265 students from Nepal studying under the Israel government-funded ‘Learn and Earn’ scheme in various parts of Israel, and about 4,500 Nepali citizens working in various professional fields.