Will Syria Witness a ‘Triple Front’ Military Escalation?

Labourers roast durum wheat to produce freekeh after harvesting a field on May 20, 2022, in the Syrian town of Binnish in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP)
Labourers roast durum wheat to produce freekeh after harvesting a field on May 20, 2022, in the Syrian town of Binnish in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP)
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Will Syria Witness a ‘Triple Front’ Military Escalation?

Labourers roast durum wheat to produce freekeh after harvesting a field on May 20, 2022, in the Syrian town of Binnish in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP)
Labourers roast durum wheat to produce freekeh after harvesting a field on May 20, 2022, in the Syrian town of Binnish in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP)

Three indicators point to the possibility of a military escalation on more than one front in Syria. Stability along the contact lines in the three Syrian areas of influence - which has been prevailing for more than two years - is threatened by new rounds of fire. This threat does not come from local forces, but rather from abroad, specifically from countries neighboring Syria.

The Russian war in Ukraine has already produced new equations in Syria. The belief that Moscow would be militarily preoccupied with its field and political battles at home and abroad triggered a regional race to “fill the Russian vacuum” in three directions.

The first front is between Israel and Iran, as Tehran intensified its military, political, and economic efforts towards the areas controlled by the Syrian government, signed agreements and provided a financial credit line to Damascus. It has also deployed its militias and organizations in locations from which Russian elements have withdrawn or may withdraw.

Moreover, Tehran set its eyes on the Syrian factions that were supported by the Hmeimim base, after the decline in funding and monthly salaries. It also escalated its campaigns to provide weapons to the Syrian factions and Hezbollah, through traditional and new supply lines, whether by land or air.

This situation has triggered a new round of the “hidden war” between Tel Aviv and Tehran in Syria. Russia tried to assume a balanced role between the belligerents, and brandished the S-300 missile system against Israeli fighters, which had carried out raids in Syria on April 13.

However, the balance that Moscow has so far managed to maintain between Tehran and Tel Aviv is today under threat of getting out of control, especially if the race rages and the impression of “Russian drowning in the Ukrainian swamp” increases.

The second direction is between Turkey and the Kurds. The Iranian-Israeli “hidden war” is not new, as is the case with the repeated Turkish efforts to “dismember” any Kurdish entity south of the border and northern Syria.

At the end of 2016, Ankara abandoned eastern Aleppo in exchange for the establishment of the “Euphrates Shield” area to sever the link between the Kurds east and west of the Euphrates River.

At the beginning of 2018, with a green light from Russia, it launched Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, to prevent the Kurds’ access to the Mediterranean.

At the end of 2019, it cut off the links of the Kurdish entity in east of the Euphrates, by establishing the “Peace Spring” region, with the consent of President Donald Trump.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly sought to establish a “safe zone”, 30 km deep along Turkey’s borders, as well as to link the three Turkish enclaves in northern Syria. But he did not get US or Russian support. At times, his views were met with threats from Washington or Moscow.

Today, something has changed. The Ukrainian war strengthened the Turkish role. Ankara is a Russian need to break its western isolation from the Turkish gate, and a necessity for NATO to accept the membership of Sweden and Finland. Accordingly, Erdogan put the “safe zone” on the table of negotiations and direct and indirect bargains, and rallied his army and loyal Syrian factions.

In the event that a new Turkish military operation is launched, whether east of the Euphrates or north of Aleppo, the military lines will change in eastern Syria, and may open the discussions on the fate of the Idlib truce. Any military action also poses political challenges between Ankara and Washington before the NATO summit next month.

The third front is between Jordan and Iranian militias. There is no doubt that Amman was among the most excited about normalization with Damascus, on all political, military, security and economic levels.

Jordan is convinced of the new reality that Russia is a neighbor and the regime is here to stay. It was hoping that normalization would ease drug and smuggling campaigns across the border.

Jordan was also betting on Russian expansion at the expense of the Iranian incursion. But recent weeks have seen a change in the equation.

This reality is confirmed by Jordanian officials, who see a Russian military retreat in southern Syria and on the borders of Jordan, and an overt attempt for Iranian advancement.

We have heard in recent days Jordanian officials referring to a “possible escalation” on the northern border, and statements about thwarting drug smuggling attempts and implementing new “rules of engagement” that include the use of immediate fire against smugglers.

The Jordanian army spokesman, Mustafa Al-Hiyari, told an official channel: “We are facing a war on these borders. A drug war. Iranian organizations, these organizations are more dangerous because they conspire with foreign agendas and target Jordanian national security.”

The Jordanian army had previously launched raids against drug networks inside Syrian territory, but had not publicized them to avoid an escalation with Damascus.

However, the recent statements point to a new phase of Jordanian involvement in the conflict, and a possible role that the US base might play in al-Tanf, within the triangle of the Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi border.



'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory.

The law, which has been widely criticised internationally, is due to come into effect in late January and could deny Khaled and thousands of others their main source of aid at a time when everything around them is being destroyed.

"For me and for a million refugees, if the aid stops, we will end. We will die from hunger not from war," the 31-year-old volunteer teacher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"If the school closes, where do we go? All the aspects of our lives are dependent on the agency: flour, food, water ...(medical) treatment, hospitals," Khaled said from an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"We depend on them after God," she said.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, running the enclave's schools, healthcare clinics and other social services, as well as distributing aid.

Now, UNRWA-run buildings, including schools, are home to thousands forced to flee their homes after Israeli airstrikes reduced towns across the strip to wastelands of rubble.

UNRWA shelters have been frequently bombed during the year-long war, and at least 220 UNRWA staff have been killed, Reuters reported.

If the Israeli law as passed last month does come into effect, the consequences would be "catastrophic," said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA's Gaza communications officer.

"There are two million people in Gaza who rely on UNRWA for survival, including food assistance and primary healthcare," she said.

The law banning UNRWA applies to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

Israeli lawmakers who drafted the ban cited what they described as the involvement of a handful of UNRWA's thousands of staffers in the attack on southern Israel last year that triggered the war and said some staff were members of Hamas and other armed groups.

FRAGILE LIFELINE

The war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas attack. Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say. Up to 10,000 people are believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Emergency Service.

Most of the strip's 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes because of the fighting and destruction.

The ban ends Israel's decades-long agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the agency in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For many Palestinians, UNRWA aid is their only lifeline, and it is a fragile one.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza, where Israel renewed an offensive last month.

Israel rejected the famine warning, saying it was based on "partial, biased data".

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said last week that it was continuing to "facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts" in Gaza.

But UN data shows the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year and the United Nations has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to the north.

"The daily average of humanitarian trucks the Israeli authorities allowed into Gaza last month is 30 trucks a day," Hamdan said, adding that the figure represents 6% of the supplies that were allowed into Gaza before this war began.

"More aid must be sent to Gaza, and UNRWA work should be facilitated to manage this aid entering Gaza," she said.

'BACKBONE' OF AID SYSTEM

Many other aid organizations rely on UNRWA to help them deliver aid and UN officials say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

"From our perspective, and I am sure from many of the other humanitarian actors, it's an impossible task (to replace UNRWA)," said Oxfam GB's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen in a phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The priority is to ensure that they will remain ... because they are essential for us," he said.

UNRWA supports other agencies with logistics, helping them source the fuel they need to move staff and power desalination plants, he said.

"Without them, we will struggle with access to warehouses, having access to fuel, having access to trucks, being able to move around, being able to coordinate," Corfixen said, describing UNRWA as "essential".

UNRWA schools also offer rare respite for traumatised children who have lost everything.

Twelve-year-old Lamar Younis Abu Zraid fled her home in Maghazi in central Gaza at the beginning of the war last year.

The UNRWA school she used to attend as a student has become a shelter, and she herself has been living in another school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat for a year.

Despite the upheaval, in the UNRWA shelter she can enjoy some of the things she liked doing before war broke out.

She can see friends, attend classes, do arts and crafts and join singing sessions. Other activities are painfully new but necessary, like mental health support sessions to cope with what is happening.

She too is aware of the fragility of the lifeline she has been given. Now she has to share one copybook with a friend because supplies have run out.

"Before they used to give us books and pens, now they are not available," she said.