The leader of a coalition of rebels fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad expressed that his group, which includes Islamists, has no desire to go to war with Israel, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Mohammed Alloush, the political leader of Jaish al-Islam, which translates to “Army of Islam,” which includes “several smaller Islamist, Salafi and nationalist rebel militias,” told Bloomberg that his fighters “have no intention to make war against anyone except for the Syrian regime.”
“If we compare all the killing in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Syrian regime has committed many more crimes than the whole conflict. Our aim now is to get rid of the Syrian regime,” he added.
Alloush accused Assad and Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist proxy supporting the Syrian regime, of exploiting “the Israel conflict to recruit supporters and build armies and all of these armies are used to kill us, to starve us.”
According to Bloomberg, Alloush’s attitude reflects the privately-held positions of many Sunni Arab governments.
“It’s crazy to think people in a country with 3 million homes destroyed by Bashar al-Assad would want a war with anyone except for Bashar al-Assad,” Alloush told Bloomberg.
Alloush quit United Nations-sponsored peace negotiations for the Syrian conflict this May,saying the international community demonstrated an “inability to enforce resolutions, in particular regarding humanitarian issues, [such as] the lifting of sieges, access to aid, the release of prisoners and adherence to the ceasefire.”
Source: The Tower, 03 Oct. 2016
