Philippines considers pulling peacekeepers from the Golan Heights

Filipino Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said he recommended to President Benigno Aquino that he withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the Golan Heights after four soldiers were abducted Tuesday. The Syrian rebel Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade said it is holding the soldiers "for their own safety" and has posted two videos of the men to show that they have not been harmed. Two months ago, 20 Filipino peacekeepers were seized from the same area by Syrian rebels and were held for a few days before being released. The peacekeepers were used to demand the pullback of Syrian regime forces. A total 342 Filipino soldiers are posted in the Golan Heights. The group comprises about one third of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) which has been monitoring the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria since 1974. Del Rosario said the soldiers were being held as human shields against attack by Syrian government forces and their exposure was "beyond tolerable limits."

Syria

British Prime Minister David Cameron is planning to use meetings in the coming days with Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss the crisis in Syria and suggest that an international conference be held in Britain. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Russian president and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week and announced a joint plan for a conference. However, while meeting with Jordanian officials in Rome on Thursday, Kerry said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could not be part of a "transitional government" in post-war Syria, which could pose a challenge to the agreement made with the Russians. Earlier, Kerry had said the situation was a matter for the Syrian people to decide. Meanwhile, in a televised speech, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, increased tensions with Israel saying the Syrian government would respond to recent Israeli airstrikes near Damascus by supplying Hezbollah fighters with weapons. Nasrallah was not clear about the type of arms, but said they were "unique weapons that it had never had before" and that it would "change the balance" of power with Israel. On Thursday, Syrian officials said they would retaliate for the Israeli strikes last weekend. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told Agence France-Presse they would "not allow this to be repeated" and "would respond immediately to any Israeli attack."

Headlines  

• New York prosecutors have accused eight men of leading one of the largest cyber bank thefts ever spanning 27 countries and stealing $45 million from two Middle East banks.
• Radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada said he would voluntarily return to Jordan if the parliament ratifies a treaty with Britain, which has been "determined" to deport the international terror suspect.
• A Finnish couple and an Australian student abducted in December 2012 in Yemen, reportedly by al Qaeda militants, were released near the Omani border overnight Wednesday.
• Iran has announced a new attack drone, the Epic, capable of surveillance and offensive missions according to Iranian media.
• Three men were arrested at a demonstration of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews at Jerusalem’s Western Wall protesting a group of women praying in garments traditionally worn by men. 

Arguments and Analysis

Syria: Intervention Will Only Make it Worse (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Time)

"Broader regional fighting could bring the U.S. and Iran into direct conflict, a potentially major military undertaking for the U.S. A U.S.-Iran confrontation linked to the Syrian crisis could spread the area of conflict even to Afghanistan. Russia would benefit from America’s being bogged down again in the Middle East. China would resent U.S. destabilization of the region because Beijing needs stable access to energy from the Middle East.

To minimize these potential consequences, U.S. military intervention would have to achieve a decisive outcome relatively quickly through the application of overwhelming force. That would require direct Turkish involvement, which seems unlikely given Turkey’s internal difficulties, particularly its tenuous relations with its substantial Kurdish minority.

The various schemes that have been proposed for a kind of tiddlywinks intervention from around the edges of the conflict-no-fly zones, bombing Damascus and so forth-would simply make the situation worse. None of the proposals would result in an outcome strategically beneficial for the U.S. On the contrary, they would produce a more complex, undefined slide into the worst-case scenario. The only solution is to seek Russia’s and China’s support for U.N.-sponsored elections in which, with luck, Assad might be "persuaded" not to participate."

The militias’ writ (The Economist)

GIVING way to the country’s unruly militias, Libya’s General National Congress, its proto-parliament, on May 5th passed a law purging the body politic of officials who held senior posts under Muammar Qaddafi. After months of deadlock in the congress, Libya’s disgruntled militiamen forced the issue by blockading the foreign and justice ministries and storming three other ministries. Anyone who held a senior post under Qaddafi in government, the civil service, the army, the police, the judiciary, in banking or in the state-owned national oil company will be disqualified from office for ten years. This is likely to exclude two of the country’s most prominent politicians since Qaddafi’s fall in October 2011-and may badly shrink the pool of relatively efficient people who are needed if Libya is to revive.

–By Jennifer T. Parker and Mary Casey