Assad greenlights ISIS against Palestinians trapped in Yarmouk camp – a sinister new partnership

DEBKA April 8/15

Obama’s rapprochement with Iran and its Middle East allies has produced an incredibly sinister new twist in the Syrian war as it enters its fifth year. The atrocity-ridden conflict finds 16,000 Palestinians trapped in horrible conditions in the Yarmouk refugee camp of Damascus and beset by two enemies: the Islamic State and the President Bashar Assad’s army.

The world has been shown three players in the vicious Yarmouk contest: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, whose jihadis are slashing through the refugee camp and massacring its Palestinian inmates, the second player, and the Syrian army, the third, which appears to be fighting to keep the Islamists from reaching central Damascus. The camp lies 8.5 km from Assad’s presidential palace.

The Islamists are usually presented as fighting to settle a score with the camp’s inmates, because the Hamas majority is aligned with Iran and Hizballah, ISIS’s deadliest foes.

But even this evil scenario is not crazy enough to cover the new patchwork of alliances revealed here by DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources.

Syrian troops were actually directed by Assad to open the roads to Damascus and give the Islamists a free path to their Palestinian victims. This saved ISIS the need to detach substantial strength from other fronts for its Yarmouk operation.

ISIS is winning its cheapest victory yet as a result of a secret understanding reached by the Syrian president with the Islamists’ leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which evolved from their covert partnership in the oil and gas fields of eastern Syria.

When Al Baghdadi captured 90 percent of those fields last year, Assad was short of military strength to dislodge the invaders without diluting the forces fighting on more important strategic fronts, such as Damascus, the capital, Deraa in the South and Aleppo in the north. So the Syrian ruler cold-bloodedly negotiated an understanding with the ISIS caliph on four points:

1. The Syrian army and air force would abstain from attacking ISIS positions and also refrain from any effort to recapture the fields.

2. ISIS would pump out the oil and gas and transfer these products to Damascus, which would then use its distribution facilities to sell the fuel on the black market after retaining a portion for domestic consumption.

3. Damascus and the Islamists would share out the revenue between them. Last year, ISIS was earning $2-4 million a day, an income which went far toward bankrolling the terrorist group’s war operations.

4. Syrian power stations would keep Islamist bases supplied with electricity.
The Syrian ruler then decided, our sources report, to build on this alliance as an opportunity for another move: The outsourcing of some of his war challenges. The plan was for Assad to control from afar the action conducted by the jihadis without having to put Syrian boots on the ground.

The Yarmouk operation was the first tryout of Assad’s battlefield ties with the Islamists.

The Syrian ruler had three goals in mind when he targeted the Palestinians:

(a) To show his closest allies Iran and Hizballah that he was not totally reliant on them for war support, but retained a free hand to fight on without them.

(b) To punish the Palestinian Hamas, which rules the Yarmouk camp, for withholding its support from his regime during the entire civil war.

Hamas needed to understand that the group’s reconciliation with Tehran and Hizballah did not count as absolution in Damascus. Assad had a separate accounting of his own with the Palestinian extremists.

(c) Assad gained a new lease of life from Washington’s turnabout toward recognizing the legitimacy of his presidency (signaled by US Secretary of State John Kerry’s acceptance of Bashar Assad as part of any peace moves for Syria). He also exploited US acceptance of Iran’s expansionist designs in the region as a point in his favor.

The Syrian ruler decided he felt confident enough to make the Palestinians his high card in his games with Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Assad wanted them all to understand that he was riding high enough to control the fate of the Palestinians: It was up to him to decide whether to save them or throw them to the wolves – which he did by letting ISIS loose against them.

April 9, 2015 | 19 Comments »

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19 Comments / 19 Comments

  3. PLO rejects idea of fighting Islamic State in Yarmouk camp
    Palestinian leadership says it won’t drag its people into Syrian conflict, would work with government to clear refugee camp of ‘terrorists’

    Read more: PLO rejects idea of fighting Islamic State in Yarmouk camp | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/plo-rejects-idea-of-fighting-islamic-state-in-yarmouk-camp/#ixzz3WueJMU9Q
    Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

    😛 😛 😛 Ping Pong anyone?

    the confusion is because it is a war between elements aligned with the GCC and elements aligned with Iran. Yarmouk is run by Hamas and IS was wresting it from Hamas and beheading Hamas. In this case Israel and PA agree that the iranian factions of Hamas are terrorists. Inside Hamas and gaza this conflict continues. Qatar just gave Abbas 100 mill, he is also giving to Hamas in gaza, but was it to the Iran factions or the GCC aligned factions(in which I have always included Qatar notwithstanding disinfo)
    POD was the first sign that Israel was part of this conflict when after targeting iranian factions in gaza Israel aborted the assembled invasion and opted for a qatar egypt brokered truce. The killing of iranian aligned factions suited Israel, GCC and GCC aligned hamas factions. Since then, so far, this scenario continues to play out to the extent that when Morsi did not play along he was replaced by Sisi by the GCC. According to the GCC there can be no Iran proxies in their sphere of influence.

  4. Bear Klein Said:

    Actually Hamas in this case is actually fighting with Assad in spite of the article by Debka. Debka may have their motivations for writing this article this way.

    They were fighting Assad – they just cut a deal with him to mutually fight ISIS. Assad has the upper hand in the situation and is using them to take the pressure off.
    No honor amongst frenemies lol

  5. Hamas refused to back Assad and he is repaying them in kind. What he is doing is weakening both of his enemies by making them fight each other rather than uniting them to fight his regime.

    Classic Machiavellian strategy.

  6. @ NormanF:

    Actually Hamas in this case is actually fighting with Assad in spite of the article by Debka. Debka may have their motivations for writing this article this way.

  11. @ bernard ross:
    It only means they are opportunist – in Gaza they give them medical aid to fight the Egyptians and Israelis , in Syria they kill each other.
    Love knows no bounds. heh

  13. Bill Levinson Said:

    ISIS massacring Hamas? I suppose ISIS isn’t all bad, like a broken clock that is right twice a day.

    Good Article here on Hamas’s friends and enemies. In fact, ISIS is probably in Gaza.

    On the surface of it, the Sunni Islamist group Islamic State would seem like a logical partner for the Sunni Islamist group Hamas. In reality, however, the two groups offer quite different world views and the Salafist Islamic State views Hamas’s support from Shiite Muslims like Iran and Hezbollah with suspicion.
    While there have been reports that Islamic State has infiltrated Gaza, Hamas officials have called these “lies and fabrications.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/08/01/who-are-hamass-friends-these-days-its-more-complicated-than-you-might-think/

  14. @ Bill Levinson:

    I suppose ISIS isn’t all bad,

    What a dumb thing to say. Can’t you see what’s going on here? Their vying for who is going to control the ME. That certainly doesn’t make one ‘better’ than the other. Let them kill each other – it’s about time. Divide and Conquer.

    Just wait Bill – once this is over we will still have to deal with the Catholic and Anglican Church.

  15. Hamas treads carefully with support for Yemen war

    Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/04/hamas-position-yemen-war-region-alliances.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=b4bf0cf351-April_09_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-b4bf0cf351-100371289#ixzz3WpqqMIy4

    LOL, Hamas caught between the devil and the deep blue sea…. couldnt happen to a nicer set of folks.
    IMO IS is chopping hamas heads in Yarmouk to make it clear that it must make its choice between the sunni arab monarchies and the shia Iran axis. Hamas has been vacillating and playing both sides of the fence but it failing miserably in that endeavor.
    😛 😛 😛

  16. Max Said:

    Oh I feel sorry for them for I have not lost touch with my human nature

    I am sure we are stunned by your compassionate feeling. And the fact that your have a ” human nature” unbelievable.

  17. Yidvocate Said:

    And does anyone believe for a minute that if all these pali-posers are brutally massacred, anyone will give a hoot?

    Oh I feel sorry for them for I have not lost touch with my human nature ” If you prick us with a pin, don’t we bleed? If you tickle us, don’t we laugh? If you poison us, don’t we die?”
    ..
    But about that dying part – I feel more sorry for myself and “us” so I say:

    “Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
    That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
    With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

    Just so long as there are none left to have any more children I think would be adequate countermeasures against their threat level.
    …ahem…
    Watched “Suicide Killers”, Road to Jenin” and “Submission” (again) last night , I’m in the mood.

  18. And does anyone believe for a minute that if all these pali-posers are brutally massacred, anyone will give a hoot? But should an Israeli or a Jew – Heaven forfend! – so much as insure even the hair of just one of these pali-posers, the entire world will become apoplectic. Immediate emergency sessions of the Security Council will be convened with a torrent of condemnations and threats of sanctions and coercive force. Could there possibly be a double standard here….huummmm, I wonder?