Just as Syria is cleaning up ISIS and al qaeda from Daraa and Quneitra provinces, the jihadi's best ally and old friend Israel have shot down a Syrian jet. One pilot dead and the other is missing. Looks like Putin has done some deal with Trump/Netanyahu to allow Israel to attack Iranian and Syrian forces. Putin and Lavrov will come to regret any deal, they don't seem to understand that the US and Israel interpret deals and backing down as weakness and will respond with further aggression.
Israel shoots down Syrian jet over occupied Golan Heights
By Bill Van Auken
25 July 2018
In a marked escalation of Israeli and US aggression aimed against Syria and Iran, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shot down a Syrian plane near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights Tuesday.
The plane, which was attacked with two US-supplied Patriot missiles, was involved in an offensive by Syrian government forces to wrest from Western-backed Islamist militias Syria’s Daraa and Quneitra provinces, near the Israeli border.
The attack itself is bound up with increasingly aggressive Israeli operations aimed against Iranian targets inside Syria. This has included recent airstrikes far to the north of the border, including near the city of Aleppo.
The shooting down of the Syrian jet came just one day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the country’s armed forces chief, General Valery Gerasimov, flew to Jerusalem for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman described the meeting as “urgent and important.”
The provocative attack on the Syrian warplane was apparently carried out with Israeli knowledge that the Russian-made Sukhoi aircraft was not a Russian-piloted aircraft. Russian and Israeli military commands have established communications that have allowed Israeli warplanes to strike Syrian and alleged Iranian targets inside Syria without facing threats from sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft systems.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/07/25/syri-j25.html
