by Israel Hayom
Syrian gunmen fire twice in 24 hours at IDF soldiers on northern border • IDF uses guided missile to destroy post • Ya'alon: "Any fire from the Syrian side will be answered immediately by silencing the sources of fire when we identify them."
The quiet on the
Israel-Syria border is disrupted as Syrians fire toward Israel.
[Illustrative]
Photo credit: Genie  |
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The Israel Defense Forces destroyed a small
Syrian army post just beyond the Golan border with Israel on Sunday,
after Syrian gunmen fired at Israeli military patrols in two separate
incidents over the past 24 hours. It is unclear at this time whether the
source of the fire was a Syrian Army post or a rebels' post.
On Saturday night, Syrian gunmen fired at an
IDF jeep patrolling the northern border. There were no injuries, but the
vehicle sustained light damage. IDF spokesman for the international
press Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said, "Our understanding is that it wasn't
stray fire."
Syrian gunmen then reportedly fired automatic
weapons at an IDF patrol a second time, on Sunday morning, prompting an
IDF response. The IDF fired a Spike NLOS guided missile at the Syrian
post, destroying it. Two Syrians were apparently wounded in the fire,
Channel 10 reported.
The IDF Spokesperson Unit confirmed that "the
military returned fire at a Syrian post after an IDF patrol came under
machine-gun fire. The target was destroyed using precision fire."
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon called the
Syrian fire a "violation of Israel's sovereignty. We take the fact that
Syrian shots were fired at an IDF patrol in Israeli territory last night
and this morning very seriously," he said.
"Any ... fire from the Syrian side will be
answered immediately by silencing the sources of fire when we identify
them," Ya'alon said.
"Following the attack, the IDF returned fire,
in accordance with government policy: Israel will respond immediately to
any violation of Israeli sovereignty or fire from the Syrian side,
identifying the source of the fire and neutralizing it. We will not
allow the Syrian army, or any other element, to violate Israeli
sovereignty by firing on our territory."
Israel has filed a complaint with the United
Nations over the incidents, an IDF spokesperson told Israel Hayom. The
Syrian gunfire disrupted work on the border fence, the spokesperson
added.
Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli Defence Ministry
official, said battles between Syrian government forces and Syrian
rebels sometimes take place just a short distance from Israeli lines.
"At times, shells or bullets are fired at
Israel. Usually the shooting (from Syria) is not deliberate, but it
doesn't matter," he told Army Radio.
"Israel should not be the target of any
attack, whether intentional or unintentional - because after all, if you
accept something that was unintentional, that could lead to something
intentional in the end," Gilad said.
The top inner forum of ministers — the
diplomatic-security cabinet — convened for the first time on Sunday to
debate the escalating tensions on Israel's border with Syria.
A senior defense official said that though the meeting
had been scheduled in advance, and meant to provide the newly appointed
ministers with an overview of basic security issues, the meeting became
urgent when the tension on the border rapidly escalated.
Syrian regime forces routed rebels in fighting
on the edge of the Golan Heights last week, leaving at least 35 dead,
activists said Saturday, as the country's civil war reached the doorstep
of the strategic plateau.
The rebel effort to overrun the Quneitra
region along the cease-fire line separating Syria and Israel has
heightened worries that Islamic extremists among those fighting Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad could take over the front line with IDF troops
and gain a potential staging ground for attacks on the Jewish state.
The frontier has largely been calm in the
nearly four decades since the two countries fought a war over the Golan
Heights that ended with a U.N.-monitored cease-fire. But Israeli
military officials have expressed concern that a rebel takeover could
upset the calm maintained by Assad and his predecessor and father the
late Hafez Assad.
Those fears have been compounded by increasing
influence wielded by extremist groups over the divided rebels and the
increasing international isolation of the regime.
"We are seeing terror organizations gaining
footholds increasingly in the territory," said IDF Chief of Staff Lt.
Gen. Benny Gantz at a conference in Israel last week. "For now, they are
fighting Assad. Guess what? We're next in line."
One of the worst-case scenarios as Syria
enters its third year of conflict is that neighboring countries such as
Israel or Lebanon could be drawn in.
Israel says it is trying to stay out of
Syria's civil war, but it retaliated for sporadic Syrian fire that
spilled into Israeli communities on the Golan Heights on several
occasions over the past few months.
When Israel bombed targets inside Syria said
to include a weapons convoy headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon in January,
Syrian opposition fighters derided Assad for not retaliating.
The Wall Street Journal reported over the
weekend that the U.S. is providing Syrian opposition groups with
military intelligence in their fight against the Assad regime, which
entered its third year this month. The Wall Street Journal published its
report as news spread that Syrian Islamic, rebel group Al-Nusra Front
has strengthened ties with Pakistan-based al-Qaida.
The U.S. has blacklisted the Al-Nusra Front, which is also battling Assad, as a terrorist group in December 2012, claiming the group was trying to hijack the Syrian uprising on behalf of al-Qaida.
Another group involved in the Golan fighting, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, is an Islamic militant group.
The rebels have largely been beaten back since they
seized control of at least one Druze village and parts of several others
in Quneitra province near the 1974 disengagement line.
Israel Hayom
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=8219
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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