The Zionist state refuses to abandon its dream of gobbling up the territory of neighbors in its never-ending pursuit of Greater Israel.

By Richard Walker

The failure of the coordinated efforts of the West, its Arab allies, and Israel to redraw the map of the Middle East by forcing regime change in Syria has exposed Israel’s declining power across the region.

Russia’s intervention in the Syrian war on the side of Syria’s government turned the tide against ISIS, al Qaeda, and the al-Nusra Front who received arms, intelligence, and training from the West and its allies, especially Britain, France, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. It also placed a spotlight on a regime change policy that had all the hallmarks of a neoconservative agenda that risked helping Israel find an excuse to go to war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and provoke a major confrontation with Iran that would drag in Western powers.

Israel has been advocating for regime change in Syria from the days of the Bush-Cheney administration. It convinced Vice President Dick Cheney that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran were ripe for a campaign to overthrow their leaders. Cheney saw to it that Syria was at the top of a regime hit list drawn up in the Pentagon and in the smoke-filled rooms of big corporate donors in Washington.

The reason Syria featured so prominently was because of Israel’s undue influence in Washington politics and its determination to hold on to the Golan Heights, which it illegally seized and has continued to hold since the 1967 Six-Day War. The Golan Heights was and, according to international law, remains Syrian territory that Israel is exploiting for military and financial gains.

From the time it seized the Golan Heights, Israel has been determined not to lose it. To that end, it has plotted to weaken Bashar al-Assad’s government and to advocate in Washington for a plot to put in place a pro-Western Syrian government that would never question Israel’s Golan occupation.

During this latest regime change war in Syria, Israel secretly aided the al-Nusra Front and illegally bombed Syria. It has continued to do this as the war winds down. Israel has also made every effort to drag Hezbollah and Iran into a shooting war, but they have not taken the bait.

Israel’s aim has been to widen the Syrian conflict so that Syria would be one of the dominoes to fall should the West be encouraged to join a wider war. The West, too, has no longer taken the bait and has decided that the regime-change effort was a disaster. Turkey was one of the first NATO nations to see the writing on the wall and moved closer to Russia, thereby ending its own efforts to unseat Assad.

In the past three years, as Israel has contemplated the possibility of the Assad government remaining in power, it has feared that Syria will eventually relaunch its rightful claim to the Golan Heights, with backing from Russia and China. This reality encouraged devious warmongers in the Israeli government like Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett to plot ways to ensure the Golan Heights can never be returned to Syria. Bennett wants to resettle over 100,000 Jews, many from Eastern Europe, in the Golan Heights, enabling Israel to eventually argue before the UN that it could not hand over an area populated by Jews to a non-Jewish regime.

Another strategy is the building of expanded military fortifications in the Golan Heights. An intelligence source in Moscow who spoke to American Free Press off the record warned that Israel may have put missiles with a nuclear capability in the Golan Heights.

“But you have no hope getting that confirmed,” the source added.

Netanyahu has long believed if Washington can be persuaded to publicly declare the Golan Heights Israeli territory the sovereignty issue will be over. He believes he has found a way to do that, knowing oil and gas provide a route map to Washington decision makers’ bank accounts and influence. When he learned that the Golan Heights held massive quantities of oil and gas, he made an unknown American company, Genie Energy in New Jersey, a partner to sharing in those riches, giving it the rights to explore 135 square miles of the Golan Heights. It was, of course, no ordinary little company. Its board membership tells you how powerful it could be in ensuring Israel gets what it seeks while Genie gets the energy riches. The board includes Dick Cheney, Lord Jacob Rothschild, Rupert Murdoch, former CIA director James Woolsey, and Larry Summers, the treasury secretary under Barack Obama.

It must, therefore, have come as a shock to Israel when Russia suddenly announced that it was entering the Golan controversy. On Aug. 2, Russia dispatched its military police to patrol the Golan Heights where it meets the border with Syria. The tactic was designed to stop Israel exploiting Islamist activity in the area to continue bombing the Syrian military.

Russia said its military police would operate eight command posts under a UN mandate to monitor the Golan Heights.

UN forces withdrew from the border area in 2012 fearing they were vulnerable. The Russian military appears to have no such fear. In a move sure to anger Netanyahu, Russia said it would transfer control of the command posts to the Syrian military when tensions eased.

Richard Walker is the pen name of a former N.Y. news producer.