Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday confirmed that the Israel had carried out a military strike in the Syrian Golan Heights the night before, further breaking from Israel’s previous policy of ambiguity around its activities against Iran in Syria.
“We are working all the time to block Iran. We operate every day, including yesterday, against Iran and its efforts to entrench itself in the region,” Netanyahu said before boarding a flight to Poland for a conference focused on Tehran’s activities in the Middle East.
On Monday night, Syrian state media reported that Israel had shelled targets in the deserted Syrian city of Quneitra.
Israeli military reporters were told that the strike targeted Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen trying to set up a base of operations near the Israeli border. The tank shelling was also meant to serve as a warning to Syria and other Iranian proxies that Israel would not tolerate Tehran’s efforts to establish a permanent military presence in the Syrian Golan.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed to Warsaw to attend a US-Polish conference on the Middle East, which is expected to focus on Iran and Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts Tuesday evening.
Netanyahu will reportedly be looking to use the summit, to be attended by several high-ranking officials from Muslim countries in the region, to help expand ties with the Arab world.
The summit appears to be the first time an Israeli leader and senior Arab officials will attend an international conference centered on the Middle East since the Madrid peace conference in 1991, which set the stage for the landmark Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians.
Netanyahu said before taking off that Iran, and not Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, would be the centerpiece of talks at the summit, and slammed European countries for continuing to work with Iran.
“Iran is sending terrorists to European capitals and at the same time … some Western European governments are helping Iran. It’s just mindboggling,” he said.
“It’s not the first time we’ve seen this kind of folly,” he added, in apparent reference to European powers pursuing an appeasement policy with Nazi Germany in 1938.
In Warsaw, Netanyahu — the only head of government to attend the conference — is scheduled to meet US Vice President Mike Pence and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as visit the city’s Jewish museum and lay a wreath at the Ghetto Heroes Monument, which commemorates the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
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