by Yoav Limor
As of late Tuesday
night, Israel did not have any clear information about who was
responsible for detonating the roadside bomb earlier in the day along
the Syrian border. Different officials believed Hezbollah was the guilty
party -- but without solid evidence Israel turned its response to the
usual address for such matters: Syria.
Even without a clear
objective, the nature of the bombing attack surely came as no surprise.
Amid the backdrop of the civil war in Syria and the violence spilling to
its borders, the Israel Defense Forces has been preparing for the past
few years for a renewal of fighting on the Golan Heights.
As part of this
preparation a new security fence was erected along the border in the
past year, and in January the IDF formed a new regional division to
prevent terrorist attacks from Syria.
Since May of last year
there have been five such attacks -- three roadside bombings and two
incidents in which rockets were fired toward the Hermon mountain range
-- as well as three incidents along the Lebanese border (two rocket
attacks and the roadside bomb which was detonated in the Har Dov area in
early March). Despite appearances that these attacks were perpetrated
by different actors, the IDF's Northern Command believes they are all
part of a larger picture orchestrated primarily by Hezbollah, which
seeks to avenge --"quietly" and "without fingerprints" -- the series of
air strikes in Syria attributed to Israel, in which advanced weapons
systems earmarked for Hezbollah were targeted. Arabic media outlets on
Tuesday were quick to tie Hezbollah to the attack on the Israeli
soldiers, reporting the bombing was part of a kidnapping attempt.
The IDF has completely
rejected these claims, but it is clear this was a very professional
operation. The explosive device was placed in a weak spot, in an area
between the border and the security fences, and the paratroopers were
forced to approach it in order to shoo away a shepherd used as bait.
Only after the soldiers stepped outside of their armored jeep and
crossed the security fence eastward was the bomb detonated. However, no
other people were spotted in the vicinity, which in hindsight
strengthens the hypothesis that the attack was not a kidnapping attempt.
The uptick in attacks
along Israel's northern borders will occupy the senior political and
security echelon in the coming days, who will seek a solution to the
question of if (and how) it is possible to deter the terrorist actors
operating with impunity inside Syrian and Lebanese territory. To this
point, Israel has managed to stay out of the civil war in Syria, but it
now seems we are being slowly and disconcertingly dragged into the
quagmire.
In the meantime, the
military and verbal responses have been aimed at Syrian President Bashar
Assad, in the hope that he will act to secure the border region and
prevent terrorist attacks. We must admit this seems to be a long shot,
not only due to Assad's weakness but because of assessments that he
himself is directly or indirectly involved, and because Israel isn't
really interested in removing him out of concern that his replacement
will be worse.
Therefore, because of the
expectation that Israel will have to thwart additional weapons transfers
-- and because of the fact that Hezbollah has decided to forgo its
no-response policy -- it appears we are headed toward the most likely
scenario, according to which our northern borders, sooner or later, will
become hotbeds of terrorist activity.
Yoav Limor
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7751
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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