Region | Palestinian Territories
Tel Aviv accuses Russia of passing intelligence about Israel to Syria
Israel believes Russia passes intelligence it gathers about the Jewish state to Syria and indirectly to Hezbollah fighters in neighbouring Lebanon, a senior military officer said on Friday.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:36 September 21, 2008
Occupied Jerusalem: Israel believes Russia passes intelligence it gathers about the Jewish state to Syria and indirectly to Hezbollah fighters in neighbouring Lebanon, a senior military officer said on Friday.
The allegations came at a touchy time in relations with Moscow, given Russian arms talks with Syria and the involvement of a Russian state-owned company in building a nuclear power plant for Iran at Bushehr on its Gulf coast.
Russia has, in turn, complained about Israeli arms and training for Georgia, with which it fought a five-day war last month over the Georgian province of South Ossetia.
Assessment
"My assessment is that their facilities cover most of the state of Israel's territory," Colonel Ram Dor, chief of information security in the armed forces, to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
He described Russian spy ships that dock in Syria and said Russian personnel serve in electronic eavesdropping stations on the Syrian side of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
"The Syrians share the intelligence that they gather with Hezbollah, and the other way around. This we know, because we know how to build a mirror-image that shows us what enemy intelligence knows about us," Dor said.
"So if the Russians help the Syrians get information, and the Syrians constantly pass it on to Hezbollah, it is a reasonable supposition that the information gathered by the Russians also reaches Hezbollah's hands."
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