Biden of the Levant: What the press is saying on November 18

The US president-elect’s presence is felt in a fresh run-in between Israel and Iran, nuke deal worries, Palestinian resumption of security cooperation and maybe more

By Joshua Davidovich Today, 10:52 am

Joe Biden pauses while speaking to supporters in front of an Arizona state flag, at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America's training center, on October 8, 2020, in Phoenix. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

1. Heard of email? An Israeli bombing raid in Syria in the predawn hours of Wednesday dominates Hebrew headlines Wednesday morning and everyone sees the conflict as a great way to send messages and keep in touch.

While Israeli sorties against Iranian targets in Syria were once so common as to be nearly ho-hum, they have become more rare, as is Israel’s decision to take responsibility for Wednesday strike, which came in response to the planting of land mines along the Syria-Israel buffer zone.
ToI’s Judah Ari Gross reports that according to IDF spokesman Hidai Zilberman, the strikes were meant to send a message to Iran and Syria both.
“The spokesman said that Israel tried to send a similar message to Iran and Syria in August after a previous attempt to plant bombs along the border, but it evidently ‘wasn’t received,’” he writes.
Amos Yadlin, head of the INSS think tank, tells Kan that “the Iranians have been trying to create a front against Israel in the Syrian Golan for a while. [Qassem] Soleimani’s plans are at 5-7% completion. Israel hasn’t attacked for two months, and now the message is that despite the changing of the guard in the US, Israel will continue to act.”
Channel 12 news reports that, according to the army, the landmines were placed by locals, which shows how deeply the Iranians are entrenched in the Syrian Golan.
Zvi Hauser, head of the Knesset’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, tells Army Radio that Israel is also learning lessons about the DMZ between Israel and Syria. “The placement of mines in the demilitarized zone is a violation of the separation of forces agreement of 1974. Given the repeated violation of the agreement, Israel should rethink the relevance of its continued existence,” he warns cryptically.
Writing before the bomb attack, Israel Hayom’s Oded Granot calls the placement of the landmines and Israel’s warning of a response “a wake-up call to anyone who thought the war between wars in the north had ended, or had at least taken a break until the end of the war between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.”

Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/biden-of-the-levant-what-the-press-is-saying-on-november-18/.