The Syrian Foreign Ministry on Saturday complained to the UN against Israel, following an air strike near Damascus on Friday night which Syria blames on Israel, the Syrian news agency SANA reports. In the complaint, sent to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council, Syria stressed that the “Israeli aggression” is part “of the ongoing Israeli attempts to prolong the crisis in Syria and the terrorist war” The Syrian Foreign Ministry said that the air strikes are “clear proof of the fact that what Israel is doing is no different from what Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra organizations are doing in terms of terrorist methods and threatening international peace and security which unveils the reality of the joint agenda of ‘Israel’ and those terrorist entities.” “Syria stresses that the continuation of Israel in its serious aggressive approach would not have been possible without the political, military and media cover provided by the US administration in the context of a state of immunity from any accountability provided by well-known states in the Security Council, which could enable Israel to continue to practice state terrorism and threat peace and security in the region and the world without any deterrent,” the ministry said in its letter. The Ministry added that Security Council’s silence regarding such flagrant violations cannot be justified and demanded it shoulder its responsibilities in maintaining international peace and security and take prompt against Israel. There have been several air strikes in Syria in recent years which have been blamed on Israel, though it has not formally commented on these strikes. Last month, an air strike in Syria hit a series of Iranian targets were hit. The IDF did not comment on the air strike, but an unnamed Israeli security official confirmed to The Associated Press that Israel was behind it. On Saturday, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot shed light on Israel's aerial effort to thwart Iran's entrenchment in Syria. Speaking with the New York Times , Eizenkot admitted that the IDF carried out many attacks in Syria and Lebanon during his term. “We operated under a certain threshold until two-and-a-half years ago. And then we noticed a significant change in Iran’s strategy. Their vision was to have significant influence in Syria by building a force of up to 100,000 Shiite fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq."
