Clashes rage in Syrian city as Israel launches strike on Damascus
The Israeli army said that it struck near the entrance to the Syrian Ministry of Defence in Damascus.
Israel has launched a series of air strikes on convoys of government forces in southern Syria since the clashes erupted and has beefed up forces on the border, saying that it is acting to protect the Druze religious minority.
Syria's Defence Ministry had earlier blamed militias in Sweida for violating a ceasefire agreement that had been reached on Tuesday, causing Syrian army soldiers to return fire and continue military operations in the Druze-majority province.
'Military forces continue to respond to the source of fire inside the city of Sweida, while adhering to rules of engagement to protect residents, prevent harm, and ensure the safe return of those who left the city back to their homes,' the statement said.
A rebel offensive led by Islamist insurgent groups ousted Syria's long-time despotic leader Bashar Assad in December, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war. Since then, the country's new rulers have struggled to consolidate control over the territory.
The primarily Sunni Muslim leaders have faced suspicion from religious and ethnic minorities.
The fears of minorities increased after clashes between government forces and pro-Assad armed groups in March spiralled into sectarian revenge attacks in which hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs, were killed.
The latest escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province.
Government forces that intervened to restore order have also clashed with the Druze while reports have surfaced of members of the security forces carrying out extra-judicial killings, looting and burning civilian homes.
No official casualty figures have been released since Monday, when the Syrian Interior Ministry said 30 people had been killed. The UK-based war monitor, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 250 people had been killed as of Wednesday morning, including four children, five women and 138 soldiers and security forces.
The observatory said at least 21 people were killed in 'field executions'.
The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam.
More than half the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in 1981.
In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the military.
In Syria, the Druze have been divided over how to deal with the country's new leaders, with some advocating for integrating into the new system while others have remained suspicious of the authorities in Damascus and pushed for an autonomous Druze region.
On Wednesday, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the Israeli army 'will continue to attack regime forces until they withdraw from the area — and will also soon raise the bar of responses against the regime if the message is not understood'.
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Exclusive-Syria believed it had green light from US, Israel to deploy troops to Sweida
By Timour Azhari, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Maya Gebeily DAMASCUS/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Syria's government misread how Israel would respond to its troops deploying to the country's south this week, encouraged by U.S. messaging that Syria should be governed as a centralized state, eight sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops and on Damascus on Wednesday in an escalation that took the Islamist-led leadership by surprise, the sources said, after government forces were accused of killing scores of people in the Druze city of Sweida. Damascus believed it had a green light from both the U.S. and Israel to dispatch its forces south despite months of Israeli warnings not to do so, according to the sources, which include Syrian political and military officials, two diplomats, and regional security sources. That understanding was based on public and private comments from U.S. special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, as well as on nascent security talks with Israel, the sources said. Barrack has called for Syria to be centrally administered as "one country" without autonomous zones. Syria's understanding of U.S. and Israeli messages regarding its troop deployment to the south has not been previously reported. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on private diplomatic discussions but said the United States supported the territorial unity of Syria. "The Syrian state has an obligation to protect all Syrians, including minority groups," the spokesperson said, urging the Syrian government to hold perpetrators of violence accountable. In response to Reuters questions, a senior official from Syria's ministry of foreign affairs denied that Barrack's comments had influenced the decision to deploy troops, which was made based on "purely national considerations" and with the aim of "stopping the bloodshed, protecting civilians and preventing the escalation of civil conflict". Damascus sent troops and tanks to Sweida province on Monday to quell fighting between Bedouin tribes and armed factions within the Druze community - a minority that follows a religion derived from Islam, with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Syrian forces entering the city came under fire from Druze militia, according to Syrian sources. Subsequent violence attributed to Syrian troops, including field executions and the humiliation of Druze civilians, triggered Israeli strikes on Syrian security forces, the defense ministry in Damascus and the environs of the presidential palace, according to two sources, including a senior Gulf Arab official. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel intervened to block Syrian troops from entering southern Syria - which Israel has publicly said should be a demilitarized zone - and to uphold a longstanding commitment to protect the Druze. Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has vowed to hold accountable those responsible for violations against the Druze. He blamed "outlaw groups" seeking to inflame tensions for any crimes against civilians and did not say whether government forces were involved. The U.S. and others quickly intervened to secure a ceasefire by Wednesday evening. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the flare-up as a "misunderstanding" between Israel and Syria. A Syrian and a Western source familiar with the matter said Damascus believed that talks with Israel as recently as last week in Baku produced an understanding over the deployment of troops to southern Syria to bring Sweida under government control. Netanyahu's office declined to comment in response Reuters' questions. Israel said on Friday it had agreed to allow limited access by Syrian forces into Sweida for the next two days. Soon after, Syria said it would deploy a force dedicated to ending the communal clashes, which continued into Saturday morning. Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said it appeared Sharaa had overplayed his hand earlier in the week. "It seems that his military staff misunderstood the backing of the U.S. It also misunderstood Israel's stand on the Jabal Druze (in Sweida) from its talks with Israel in Baku," he said. 'TOOK IT AS A YES' A Syrian military official said correspondence with the U.S. had led Damascus to believe it could deploy forces without Israel confronting them. The official said U.S. officials had not responded when informed about plans for the deployment, leading the Syrian leadership to believe it had been tacitly approved and "that Israel would not interfere." A diplomat based in Damascus said Syrian authorities had been "overconfident" in its operation to seize Sweida, "based on U.S. messaging that turned out not to reflect reality." U.S. envoy Barrack has said publicly and in private meetings in Damascus that Syria should be "one country," without autonomous rule for its Druze, Kurdish or Alawite communities, which remain largely distrustful of the new Islamist-led leadership. That distrust has prompted Druze factions and a major Kurdish force in northeast Syria to resist Syrian army deployments, and demand their own fighters be integrated into the army as wholesale units only stationed in their territory. Landis said it appeared Sharaa had understood Barrack's statements against federalism in Syria "to mean that the central government could impose its will on the Druze minority by force." The senior Gulf official said Damascus had made a "big mistake" in its approach to Sweida, saying troops had committed violations including killing and humiliating Druze. The nature of violence handed Israel an opportunity to act forcefully, the Gulf official and another source said. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group, said on Friday the death toll from the violence had reached at least 321 people, among them medical personnel, women and children. It said they included field executions by all sides. Reuters was able to verify the time and location of some videos showing dead bodies in Sweida, but could not independently verify who conducted the killings or when they occurred. A regional intelligence source said Sharaa had not been in control of events on the ground because of the lack of a disciplined military and his reliance instead on a patchwork of militia groups, often with a background in Islamic militancy. In sectarian violence in Syria's coastal region in March hundreds of people from the Alawite minority were killed by forces aligned to Sharaa. With more blood spilt and distrust of Sharaa's government high among minorities, the senior Gulf Arab official said there are "real fears that Syria is heading towards being broken up into statelets." The official from the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs said the Sweida operation was not aimed at revenge or escalation, but at preserving the peace and unity of the country. Syrian troops were ready to re-engage to end the communal violence there "whenever appropriate conditions arise, including clear guarantees from the United States that Israel will not intervene," the official said, speaking before the Israeli announcement. US DID NOT BACK ISRAELI STRIKES Israel initially lobbied the United States to keep the country weak and decentralised after Assad's fall, Reuters reported in February. In May, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Sharaa, said he would lift all U.S. sanctions, and nudged Israel to engage with Damascus even though much of Israel's political establishment remains skeptical of new Syrian leadership. A State Department spokesperson said on Thursday that the U.S. "did not support" Israel's strikes on Sweida this week. The attacks also came as a shock to some Americans in Syria. Hours before Israel struck the capital city on Wednesday, executives from three US-based energy companies arrived in Damascus for a day of meetings. The lead member and organizer, Argent LNG CEO Jonathan Bass, told Reuters he had been sufficiently reassured by Washington that the violence unfolding in Sweida would not escalate to Damascus. They were pitching an energy project to Syria's finance minister when Israel struck. Solve the daily Crossword
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‘Five-Alarm Fire': Texas Dem Sounds Off on Trump's Bid to Gerrymander Midterms
Congressional midterms are an inevitable ordeal for sitting presidents. More often than not, the honeymoon glow of their election win is long gone, and voters arrive at the ballot box prepared to punish the incumbent party. As Republicans gear up for a grueling fight to hold onto their bicameral majority in Congress, President Donald Trump is already trying to rig the game. Last week, The New York Times reported that Trump and his allies have been encouraging Texas Republicans to break with established redistricting laws mandating a census-based reevaluation of the state's electoral map at the beginning of every decade, and instead jerry-rig five new Republican-majority congressional districts before the midterms. 'This is a five-alarm fire, what's happening in Texas,' Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tells Rolling Stone. 'Donald Trump has already said that if he does this to Texas, he wants to do this all across the country.' It's unclear at the moment if Casar's district — Texas-35 — would be affected. It is already severely gerrymandered, stretching in an awkward wedge for putting wedged-shaped creation that stretched over 100 miles between San Antonio and Austin. 'I don't know, and virtually no members of Congress know,' Casar said of the possibility that his own district may be reshaped. 'Even the Republican members say they have not seen these maps and that it makes them nervous.' 'If you look at Texas' map, it's already illegal and gerrymandered,' Casar adds, referencing ongoing litigation against the map produced by Republican-led redistricting efforts in 2021. 'What Donald Trump wants to do by trying to gerrymander five more seats in Texas [is to] essentially end the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as we know it.' On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he was only looking for 'a very simple redraw — we pick up five seats. A couple of other states where we will pick up seats also.' The play is a gamble for Trump and a potential self-immolation for Texas Republicans. Chopping up safe Republican enclaves to eke out a few more seats could make them too small to overcome a mass mobilization by Democratic voters. Essentially, the redraw could up the number of battleground districts in 2026, and hand Trump and the GOP additional losses. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the Texas legislature to take place on Monday, July 21. The session will address redistricting, among other issues. Democrats in Texas are working with an extremely narrow set of options in order to prevent the Republican majority from unilaterally redrawing the electoral map, the most powerful of which is the ability to deny the special session an operational quorum by outright leaving the state. 'Democrats need to have every option on the table,' Casar insists. 'That includes quorum breaks, filibusters, marching in the street, pressure on the Speaker of the House, [and] well-funded campaigning against every Republican member of Congress who goes along with this.' In the aftermath of a 2021 quorum break — in which Texas Democrats left the state for 38 days in an attempt to prevent the passage of a law restricting vote by mail and implementing criminal penalties on voting-assistance — Republicans codified penalties against lawmakers who would attempt similar tactics. These include hefty daily fines, and the potential of reprimand or expulsion from the legislature. In Casar's view, the party should ignore such intimidation tactics. 'To me the penalties are clearly unconstitutional and unenforceable,' he says. The risk is probably worth it. 'This is about something much greater than any one congressional district,' he says. 'We're talking about the future of voting rights for Texas and for the entire country.' 'If Trump gets his way and radically redraws the entire Texas map, then Texas Republicans could start representing a completely different area of the state in a couple weeks than they represent today,' Casar continues. He points to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits the abridgement of voting rights 'on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' Section 2 has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as barring the dilution of voting power among groups through gerrymandering schemes. 'The Voting Rights Act is written to try to make sure that Hispanic and Black Americans do not have their neighborhoods chopped up into tons of little slices, so that their voting power is completely diluted,' Casar explains. 'In order for Trump to get four or five more seats out of an already gerrymandered Texas, I think they would most likely have to completely disenfranchise black and Latino neighborhoods all across the state.' Congressional Democrats held a call on Monday to discuss potential options. 'The mobilization isn't happening fast enough yet. Trump is trying to get all of this done in the next week or two,' Casar adds. 'He doesn't want Republican members of Congress to really get a chance to look at these new maps. He certainly doesn't want the American people to get a chance to look at these maps.' 'We need the mobilization to happen much quicker. This is a five-alarm fire that people are just now starting to notice,' he says. Casar suggests that not only does the Democratic response require a full court mobilization of their own, but an appeal to Republicans over the reality that they may inadvertently fuck themselves over if they follow through on Trump's request. They 'could be vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right and an insurgent Democrat from the left. So Democrats need to have a campaign operation ready to go to take on any Texas Republican whose seat is now more vulnerable,' Casar says. 'We have to be ready to go to win back the Democratic seats, even if they make them even more gerrymandered. And we need to have every legislative tool on the table, from filibusters to quorum busts to marches in the streets of Austin, every option on the table.' 'The question that is before Texas Republicans today,' Casar says, 'is will they stand up for themselves and their own constituents, or are they just water boys for Donald Trump.' More from Rolling Stone The No Kings Playbook to Confront Trump's 'Authoritarian Breakthrough' Trump Claims He 'Never Wrote a Picture in My Life.' He Actually Drew Plenty of Them Team Trump Was on 'F-cking Warpath' to Kill Story About Salacious Letter to Epstein Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
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State Department official testifies how Stephen Miller was involved in discussions over student visas and antisemitism
The State Department had more than a dozen meetings with the White House – including Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump's White House deputy chief of staff – and other agencies to discuss the topic of student visas, a top department official said in federal court on Friday. The White House did not comment on the meetings. John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, described to a judge how the State Department used broad definitions of antisemitism when scrutinizing the speech and activities of non-citizen students and professors the department chose to attempt to remove from the US. Armstrong appeared toward the end of a two-week trial in which a group of university professors who say the administration's efforts to deport individuals over their anti-Israel views is intended to limit protected political speech. During his testimony, Armstrong discussed action memos to revoke visas for several students and professors as part of the US's effort to combat antisemitism, whose definition could include comments against the Israeli government, support of an arms embargo in the war in Gaza or calling for the US to stop military aid to Israel. 'This is not a mundane thing,' Armstrong said. 'If we get this stuff wrong, we get 9/11. This is very serious stuff.' According to previous testimony from Homeland Security agents, a system was established whereby the State Department would send DHS referrals for non-citizens they wanted investigated. DHS would then investigate the person and send a report to the State Department if they believed there was enough to support a visa revocation. On Friday, Armstrong testified that in several instances the memos to revoke the visas for professors and students noted that the removal orders could become a legal issue because the orders were tied to their speech. One memo that Armstrong signed himself was for the removal orders for Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk. Following the orders, Öztürk was locked up for several weeks earlier this year after a plainclothes officer approached her on the sidewalk near her house, grabbed her wrists and detained her. She lost her visa, Armstrong testified, because of an op-ed she co-authored, participation in an anti-Israel protest and loose connection to a banned pro-Palestinian student group. The federal judge presiding over the case, William Young, said Thursday that it was his current position that First Amendment protections covere non-citizens. 'I'm asking if a lawfully non-citizen has the same rights as a citizen,' Young said Thursday. 'Probably they do. The answer is in the affirmative. Again, we are talking about pure speech.' Closing arguments in the trial will begin Monday.
