Gantz, Abbas Discuss Security Coordination in Phone Call

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas raises a picture taken from the “New York Times” during a speech at the UN General Assembly (Reuters)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas raises a picture taken from the “New York Times” during a speech at the UN General Assembly (Reuters)
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Gantz, Abbas Discuss Security Coordination in Phone Call

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas raises a picture taken from the “New York Times” during a speech at the UN General Assembly (Reuters)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas raises a picture taken from the “New York Times” during a speech at the UN General Assembly (Reuters)

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz asked Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to work on restoring security coordination to abort attempts to spread chaos, a Tel Aviv political source revealed on Tuesday.

“Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called Defense Minister Benny Gantz to congratulate him on the Jewish New Year,” the PA news agency WAFA reported.

An Israeli official confirmed the conversation, albeit a short one, and said the two also discussed the security situation in the West Bank and reinforcing security coordination.

Gantz also asked Abbas to work toward stopping the escalation.

According to informed Israeli sources, Gantz seized the opportunity in Abbas’s call to urge the PA head to “restore security coordination between the PA and Tel Aviv to the way it was before,” stressing that it was in the interest of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Gantz’s office said that the defense minister discussed with Abbas “the security situation in Judea and Samaria (the Israeli naming of the occupied West Bank territories), and the need to strengthen security coordination to ensure that law and order are upheld.”

It added that Gantz also discussed strengthening of the PA’s control over the West Bank’s Area A, as stipulated by the Oslo Agreement.

For his part, Abbas said that the cause of tension in the occupied Palestinian territories is due to the strict measures that Israel exercises against citizens, ranging from daily mass arrests to encouraging settler militias to carry out attack.

However, Gantz warned that “there is a significant increase in Palestinian terrorist operations against the Israeli army and settlers, and this forces the army to be present in a large way and to pursue organizations to thwart such operations.”

The Israeli source affirmed that although the conversation between Gantz and Abbas was cordial it resembled a “voiceless dialogue.”



US-led Forces Kill Senior ISIS Leader in Syria

 US forces vehicles and structures are seen on the outskirts of the northern Syrian town of Manbij on December 26, 2018. (AFP)
US forces vehicles and structures are seen on the outskirts of the northern Syrian town of Manbij on December 26, 2018. (AFP)
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US-led Forces Kill Senior ISIS Leader in Syria

 US forces vehicles and structures are seen on the outskirts of the northern Syrian town of Manbij on December 26, 2018. (AFP)
US forces vehicles and structures are seen on the outskirts of the northern Syrian town of Manbij on December 26, 2018. (AFP)

A raid by US-led forces in northwestern Syria on Friday killed a senior leader in the ISIS group, the US military said Friday.

The US Central Command said in a statement that it had killed ISIS leader Dhiya Zawba Muslih al-Hardan and his two adult sons, who were also affiliated with the group, early Friday in a raid in the town of al-Bab, in Syria’s Aleppo province.

It said the men “posed a threat to US and Coalition Forces, as well as the new Syrian Government,” adding that three women and three children at the site were not harmed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said the raid was carried out through an airdrop of forces, the first of its kind to be carried out by the US-led coalition against ISIS this year, and that ground forces from both the Syrian government’s General Security forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces participated.

The observatory said the operation was “preceded by a tight security cordon around the targeted site, a heavy deployment of forces on the ground, and the presence of coalition helicopters in the airspace of the area.”

There was no statement from either the government in Damascus or the SDF about the operation.

Washington has developed increasingly close ties with the new Syrian government in Damascus since the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad in a lightning opposition offensive last year, and has been pushing for a merger of forces between the new Syrian army and the Kurdish-led SDF, which controls much of the country’s northeast.

However, progress between the two sides in agreeing on the details of the merger has been slow and could be further complicated by the recent outbreak of sectarian violence in the southern province of Sweida, in which government forces joined Bedouin clans in fighting against armed factions from the Druze religious minority.