WarSclerotic

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo next week will become the first senior foreign official to visit Israel since it put in place strict travel restrictions to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Pompeo’s visit will require medical precautions to prevent infections, which were coordinated with Israeli officials, Israel’s Channel 13 reported Friday.

Dr. William Walters, the US State Department’s deputy chief medical officer, said Friday that everyone flying with Pompeo will be tested for the virus one or two days before the flight, will be checked for symptoms before boarding, and will wear face coverings during the trip.

Pompeo and his small traveling party will be exempt from Israel’s virus restrictions that bar foreign visitors from entering and require returning Israelis to self-quarantine for 14 days. Pompeo is currently undergoing daily checks by medical personnel, Walters said.

Pompeo will be on the ground in Israel for only several hours on Wednesday before returning to Washington from his first overseas trip since making an unannounced visit to Afghanistan in March.

Everyone who meets with the US team during the trip will be checked for COVID-19 symptoms. Pompeo’s movements will be strictly controlled and limited to working meetings and the airport, and he will not meet with anyone in public settings.

People wear protective face masks as they shop at the Carmel market in Tel Aviv, May 8, 2020. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

The visit announcement comes amid concerns over the virus spreading in the White House. Katie Miller, US Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday. On Thursday, White House officials confirmed that a member of the military serving as one of  US President Donald Trump’s valets had tested positive for the virus.

The trip is expected to focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to annex portions of the West Bank, the US State Department said Friday.

Pompeo will see Netanyahu and his new coalition partner Benny Gantz as the Trump administration tries to return to business as normal by resuming governmental travel and reopening an economy devastated by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Pompeo will “discuss US and Israeli efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as regional security issues related to Iran’s malign influence,” spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

The top US diplomat for the Middle East, David Schenker, declined to comment on the status of the annexation discussions, noting that a joint US-Israeli mapping committee had not yet completed its work in determining the specific boundaries that might be proposed by Israel or accepted by the United States.

Alone among most governments, the Trump administration has said it will support the annexation of West Bank territory claimed by the Palestinians for an eventual state as long as Israel agrees to enter peace talks with the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset, April 30, 2020 (screen capture via Knesset website)

Pompeo’s arrival will coincide with the swearing-in of Israel’s new government, which is expected to be formally installed on May 13. Schenker said the trip to Israel was in the works before it became clear that the swearing in ceremony would happen on the same day.

After battling to a stalemate in three inconclusive elections over the past year, Netanyahu and his chief rival, former army chief Gantz, last month agreed to form a joint government.

Under the deal, Netanyahu will serve as prime minister while Gantz will hold the new position of “alternate prime minister,” giving each side effective veto power over the other. The pair agreed to trade positions after 18 months.

Their “emergency” government is meant to focus on the coronavirus crisis during its first six months. But their coalition agreement also permits Netanyahu to introduce an annexation proposal to the government after July 1, even if Gantz objects.

Annexation advocates believe they have a narrow window to redraw the Mideast map before November’s US presidential election. They also believe it would give Trump a boost with pro-Israel voters, particularly the politically influential evangelical Christian community. The presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has said he opposed unilateral moves by Israel in keeping with what had been decades of US policy prior to Trump.

The annexation agreement says that any step must be coordinated with the US while also keeping regional stability and peace agreements in consideration.

Netanyahu’s plan to annex portions of the West Bank has been met with harsh criticism from nearly the entire international community, including Washington’s European allies and key Arab partners, with the prominent exception of the United States. Trump’s much-vaunted Mideast peace plan allows for the possibility of US recognition of such annexations provided Israel agrees to negotiate under the framework of the proposal that was unveiled in January.

That plan calls for the creation of a Palestinian state but gives it limited autonomy on a fraction of the land it has sought. The Palestinians have rejected the proposal outright.

The number of active coronavirus cases in Israel continued to drop Saturday, with 4,886 current patients out of 16,444 cases identified since the start of the pandemic, and only three new cases diagnosed since Friday night.

Also notably, no new deaths had been reported over the past 24 hours, with the death toll holding steady at 245 since Friday morning. It was the first instance in which no new fatalities were seen in a 24-hour period since March 28.

Of those who are ill, 81 people were in serious condition, of which 65 were on ventilators, and 51 people were in moderate condition. The rest were suffering mild symptoms only.

Those who have recovered from the disease numbered 11,313.

With the number of new cases in Israel steadily dropping, Saturday night would mark two weeks since there have been more than 200 infections recorded in a 24-hour period, and one week where new cases didn’t exceed 100 per day.

Amid the sustained drop in infections, the government has increasingly rolled back restrictions meant to curb the outbreak, opening some schools and allowing many businesses to reopen.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that all lockdown restrictions could be removed by the middle of June and the government on Monday canceled the 100-meter limit on Israelis traveling from their homes for activities deemed nonessential, as well as restrictions preventing people from visiting with family.

Malls, outdoor markets and gyms reopened Thursday morning after over six weeks of closure, with shoppers reported at shopping centers throughout the country.

Netanyahu warned, though, that Israel could have to reassess enforcing social distancing measures if there are more than 100 new coronavirus cases a day, a doubling of cases within 10 days, or over 250 people with serious symptoms in hospitals.

Israel’s National Emergency Authority fears a second wave of coronavirus infections and is calling on the government to use the relative lull in cases to prepare hospitals for a substantial increase in respiratory ventilation and treatment capacities.

An airstrike attributed to Israel earlier this week caused major damage to a presumed missile workshop outside Aleppo in northern Syria, according to satellite images released Thursday by an Israeli intelligence firm.

Late Monday night, the Israeli military conducted two rounds of airstrikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria, including one against a weapons factory in al-Safira outside Aleppo and a second against militia bases in Deir Ezzor in the east of the country, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

Those attacks appeared to be the sixth and seventh strikes attributed to Israel against Iran-linked forces in Syria in the past two weeks. There was no word on the raids by the Israel Defense Forces, which rarely comments on individual cross-border attacks, though Defense Minister Naftali Bennett appeared to confirm Israel’s role in the strikes, repeatedly saying in the days preceding and following them that Israel was working to expel Iran from Syria.

On Thursday evening, the satellite imagery analysis firm ImageSat International released photographs of the weapons factory that was struck in the raids, showing significant damage to one of the structures.

“The workshop probably had a critical role in the missile production and assembly process, and possibly included unique machinery. Such an attack can stop the production process at this site,” the firm wrote in its assessment.

An explosion is seen following an alleged Israeli attack on a Hezbollah arms cache near Homs in central Syria on May 1, 2020. (Screen capture: Twitter)

In recent years, Jerusalem has accused Iran of helping the Hezbollah terror group develop advanced precision-guided missiles. Israel has vowed to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining such munitions, threatening military action in order to do so.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the airstrike on the al-Safira facility caused massive secondary explosions.

A Syrian security official told the Kremlin-backed Sputnik news outlet that the Israeli aircraft that conducted the Aleppo attack came from the region of the US military’s al-Tanf military base, which is near the Syrian border with Jordan and Iraq and is surrounded by a large de-confliction zone.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition battling the Islamic State jihadist group said it was not responsible for the strikes.

According to the Observatory, the strike on Tehran-backed militia bases in the Deir Ezzor region killed 14 pro-Iranian fighters, who were all either Iranian or Iraqi nationals.

The Britain-based monitor did not report any deaths in the strike on the weapons factory outside Aleppo.

Last Tuesday, Bennett appeared to confirm that Israel was responsible for recent attacks against pro-Iranian forces in Syria, saying that the military was working to drive Tehran out of the country.

Defense Minister Naftali Bennett of Yamina in the plenum hall of the Knesset on February 10, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“We have moved from blocking Iran’s entrenchment in Syria to forcing it out of there, and we will not stop,” Bennett said in a statement.

“We will not allow more strategic threats to grow just across our borders without taking action,” he said. “We will continue to take the fight to the enemy’s territory.”

Bennett did not explicitly confirm Israel’s involvement in that airstrike, though his comments were seen as a clear hint to that effect.

Israeli military officials have warned that acknowledging such strikes adds pressure on Iran and its proxies to retaliate in order to save face.

On Tuesday, a senior Israeli defense official said Israel was putting pressure on Iran to leave Syria and would continue to do so until the Islamic Republic completely withdrew its forces from the country, though he refused to explicitly confirm Israel’s role in the recent airstrikes.

Jerusalem says Iran’s presence in Syria, where it is fighting in support of President Bashar Assad, is a threat, as Tehran seeks to establish a permanent foothold along Israel’s northern borders. Israel has also threatened to take military action to prevent Iran from providing the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group with advanced weaponry, specifically precision-guided missiles.

Though Israeli officials generally refrain from taking responsibility for specific strikes in Syria, they have acknowledged conducting hundreds to thousands of raids in the country since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

These have overwhelmingly been directed against Iran and its proxies, notably Hezbollah, but the IDF has also carried out strikes on Syrian air defenses when those batteries have fired at Israeli jets.

Agencies contributed to this report.

Iranian forces are pulling out of Syria and closing military bases there, Israeli defense officials said Tuesday, amid increasing reports of Israeli airstrikes on Iran-linked militias in the country in recent months, including two such incidents late Monday night in which 14 Iran-linked fighters were reported killed.

The Israeli officials refused to comment on these reported attacks, maintaining Israel’s policy of ambiguity, under which it generally acknowledges taking action against Iran in Syria without specifically confirming individual strikes, under the assumption that public confirmation increases the likelihood of retaliation.

Though Israel’s fight against Iran in Syria has been ongoing for nearly a decade, after Tehran began sending its troops and its proxies into Syria at the outbreak of the country’s civil war in 2011, recent months have seen an increase in the number of strikes against Iran-linked sites in the country, targeting locations across the country with the highest concentration around Syria’s capital Damascus.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that this effort appears to be bearing fruit as Iranian forces have begun leaving the country, evacuating a small number of military bases previously under their control in the process. Independently, there has also been a drop in the number of Shiite militias operating in Syria, though this decrease is because of the natural progression of the civil war and not because of Israel’s actions.

Damage caused to a street from secondary explosions after an alleged Israeli attack on a Hezbollah arms cache near Homs in central Syria on May 1, 2020. (Syrian state media SANA)

The officials said that while Israel does not believe the Iranians will accept these setbacks without responding in some way, an imminent retaliation does not appear to be in the offing.

“We are determined, more determined [than Iran], and I can tell you why — for Iran, Syria is an adventure happening 1,000 kilometers away from home. For us, it’s our lives,” Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday.

“Iranian soldiers who come to Syria and operate there, their lives are in their hands. They are putting their lives at risk, they are paying that price and will continue to do so. We will not give up and we will not allow the establishment of an Iranian forward operating base in Syria,” Bennett said.

The number of transport flights from Iran to Syria, bringing advanced munitions into the country, have also dropped dramatically in the past half-year, apparently the result of Israeli strikes on the airports in Syria where these flights would land.

A moment before an Israeli missile destroys a Syrian SA-22 air defense system on May 10, 2018. (Israel Defense Forces)

Alongside the uptick in the number of strikes on Iran-backed forces in Syria, Israel has also reportedly targeted a larger number of Syrian military air defense systems.

“Syria is paying a growing price for the Iranian presence in its territory, for a war that isn’t [Syria’s]. Iran has turned from an asset to Syria into a burden,” the defense officials told reporters.

They added that Israel plans to keep up its pressure on Iran until its military leaves Syria for good.

Though the officials boasted of Iran’s departure from Syria as a recent development, the Israel Defense Forces has been saying since at least 2018 that its operations against Iran have forced Tehran to radically change and scale back its plans for Syria.

Jerusalem has long maintained that Iran was working to establish a permanent military presence in Syria in order to use it as a springboard for attacks against Israel — similar to what Tehran accomplished by supporting its proxy Hezbollah. That organization began as a small terrorist group in southern Lebanon carrying out deadly but minor attacks on IDF troops, but has gone on to become one of the most powerful military forces in the region, with capabilities exceeding those of many sovereign nations.

A picture taken from the remains of a tank dating back from the 1973 war, shows the Syrian town of Quneitra, as seen from the Golan Heights, on December 23, 2019. (JALAA MAREY / AFP)

In recent years, Israel has also warned that Iran was helping Hezbollah convert its massive arsenal of simple rockets into far more lethal precision-guided missiles, a project that the IDF has designated as the second-most significant threat to the country after Tehran’s nuclear program.

Indeed, one of the strikes attributed to Israel on Monday night targeted a Syrian military research center, which was reportedly involved in this precision project.

A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, in which Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed January 3, 2020. (Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office via AP)

The defense officials partially credited the successes against Iran in Syria to the US strike on the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s expeditionary Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, earlier this year, which left Tehran without one of its most skilled generals.

For Israel, either path Iran decides to take in Syria — remain there or fully leave — is potentially beneficial. If Iran leaves, Israel will have successfully prevented the opening of another front against it. If Iran stays in Syria, where Israel maintains intelligence and aerial superiority, the IDF would be able to continue striking Iranian forces, exacting a heavy price from Tehran, while being able to defend against and thwart Iranian attacks