Israel At War Monday December 9

 Israel at war day 430

 - The Lebanese al-Mayadeen channel reports that Israeli tanks are three kilometers away from the city of Qatna, which is only 20 kilometers from Damascus.  It was also reported that the IDF took over a row of villages near the border with Lebanon. At the same time, reports of extensive attacks in the Damascus area (Kan News)

- Saudi Arabia: The fact that Israel occupied a buffer zone in the Golan Heights shows its determination to sabotage the chance of restoring stability in Syria

-Netanyahu: Yesterday, a new and dramatic chapter in the history of the Middle East opened - the Assad regime fell. This is a central link in Iran's axis of evil. Everything that Iran has invested has gone down the drain

- UN: “Israel army presence in Golan Heights buffer zone in Syria a violation of 1974 agreement”

- British Telegraph: Senior members of the Revolutionary Guards are furious about the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and are shifting blame among themselves.

- A Israeli security source: Israel's goal is to destroy everything from Assad's army that could fall into the hands of the rebels - from tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, and missiles. We are destroying the equipment of the Assad army. (Amichei Stein)

- 3 more IDF soldiers killed in Gaza HYD  and 12 injured at a incident in Jabalya, bringing the death toll to 286 since the ground invasion began

Ido Zano, 20, from Yehud-Monosson.

Barak Daniel Halpern, 19, from Kiryat Ono.

Omri Cohen, 19 from Ashdod.

- 4 IDF soldiers killed in Lebanon hyd

in a suspected “operational accident” in southern Lebanon yesterday According to an initial IDF probe, the soldiers were scanning a tunnel in the Labbouneh area of southern Lebanon when a cache of explosives stored there detonated. The military suspects that it was not a Hezbollah booby trap, but rather due to explosives previously placed by Israeli forces there to blow up the tunnel.

The slain troops are named as:

Evgeny Zinershain, 43, from Zichron Yaakov.

Sagi Ya’akov Rubinshtein, 31, from Kibbutz Lavi.

Binyamin Destaw Negose, 28, from Beit Shemesh.

Erez Ben Efraim, 25, from Ramat Gan.

- Hamas handed over a list of abductees slated for release, including 4 with American citizenship. 

- A Undetected drone from Yemen hits building in southern town of Yavne, no injuries,IDF failed to shoot it down.

- Updates from Syria: The IDF is attacking at this time with another wave of attacks, this time in the Daraa area in southern Syria. On the last day, more than 100 targets of the former Assad regime were attacked throughout Syria

- Egypt condemns Israel’s “further occupation of Syrian lands” and views the Israeli military’s movement into a buffer zone as an attempt to enforce a new reality on the ground.

- A Senior American officials told the Washington Post: The United States maintains contact with all the different groups in Syria, including Tahrir al-Sham, which is defined as a terrorist organization. The organization is now being re-evaluated, and it will be checked if it can be removed from the list of terrorist organizations

- Lebanese army says One killed and four soldiers wounded in an Israeli strike on a car in the south of the country.

Kremlin on the report that Assad received asylum in Russia: it was Putin's decision. The Russian president does not currently plan to meet with Assad

- Who is Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the man who toppled the Assad regime? Julani was born in the 1980s to a Syrian family that left Syria when Hafez al-Assad rose to power. He grew up in the Gulf but returned to Syria in 1989. When the Iraq War kicked off in the early 2000s, Julani became radicalized and joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to fight the Americans. He participated in battles against coalition forces in Iraq and rose the ranks of AQI before being captured and imprisoned by American forces for a number of years.

Upon his release and the start of the Syrian Civil War, Julani returned to his home country and founded the Al-Nusra Front, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria which quickly became one of the most effective fighting forces in the early stages of the war. After an alliance with ISIS, Julani eventually broke ties with the group and eventually with Al-Qaeda itself. In the past years, Julani has apparently turned an about face and renounced many parts of his past life. His years of diligent work and investment in alliance-building and professional military training for his fighters is what lead to the stunning offensive we all saw in the past few days.

Julani has given numerous speeches, public statements and interviews to Western media where he claims that he wants Syria to become an Islamic Democracy with space and protection for all of its minorities. Whether Julani has actually changed remains to be seen – actions will speak louder than words.