Two days after Israeli warplanes carried out attacks against Syrian air defenses, Israeli tanks have attacked and destroyed a Syrian army post in the nation’s south, citing an errant mortar that landed in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
It’s not clear who fired the mortar, and it didn’t hit anything. The Israeli Army, however, argued it was a “violation” of Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory, and that no matter who fired it, they consider the Syrian government to blame.
Israel has favored a policy of holding a single faction responsible no matter who fires shells or rockets, as it allows them to use any such incidents as a pretext to carry out major attacks into foreign territory, nominally as “retaliation.”
There has yet to be any report of the casualties from the destruction of the Syrian post, while Israel says there were no casualties nor any property damage within Israeli territory as a result of the incident.
what an oxymoron Israel attacks Syria for a round that lands in Syria! Just because Israel illegally occupies the place doesn’t mean they actually have sovereignty over it!
I have no proof of this, but I sincerely believe that Israel has a special military group that, dressed as Arabs, they go into land around Israel and then fire into unoccupied space in Israel. This false flag is then used as an excuse to attack whomever the Israelis want to attack. I doubt that anyone could say that this a tactic that, “Israel would never stoop down to.”
Silly they don’t need to. Eventually (like this time) mistakes happen. They admit it was an errant round. The response was disproportionate. Next time maybe they nuke Damascus?
A disproportionate response is indistinguishable from a pretext.
A pretext still is standard practice though. There is probably some formal document for requesting a pretext. “I covet this piece of land, can you give me a pretext?”. There are levels of pretexts. Somewhere in the middle is the unverifiable claim like the stray mortar. There’s rarely a need to go higher. You have to wait longer then. Ranking below that is the eyewitness who says you’re lying and below that the blatant lie. That’s often good enough.
There is no need to accept the stray mortar story as fact.