The Bashar al-Assad regime today claimed responsibility for firing on and destroying an IDF army jeep. The claim that the jeep had been destroyed was false. The claim of gunfire was absolutely real – the patrol vehicle was damaged by bullets – and was the third recent incident of cross-border fire from Syria.
The IDF determined that the shots were intentional and retaliated with a short-range anti-tank missile at a Syrian army position from where the shots were fired. Israel’s chief of staff, Gen. Benny Gantz warned that Assad was risking a severe deterioration:
“Assad encourages and directs the widening of different operations against Israel, including the Golan Heights,” Gantz told a conference at the University of Haifa. He said in Tuesday’s incident, the Israeli patrol was targeted several times by a “clearly marked Syrian position.” He rejected Syrian claims that the vehicle had veered into Syrian territory. “We will not allow the Golan Heights to become a comfortable space for Assad to operate from,” Gantz said. “If he deteriorates (the situation on) the Golan Heights, he will have to bear the consequences.”
The Syrian announcement came only hours after Syrian television aired a video allegedly showing a captured IDF patrol vehicle. However, Israeli defense officials dismissed the propaganda effort. The jeep was believed to be an IDF vehicle either left behind in Lebanon in 2000 or sold as army surplus, but in any case had not been used for decades.
Analysis published in The Tower yesterday highlighted Syrian behavior that risks a regional escalation of the country’s now more than two-year-old conflict. There are multiple scenarios for deterioration, ranging from more gunfire incidents, to the use of rockets and missiles against Israeli civilians, through the potential use of chemical weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestured toward these and other threats from Iran and its allies in statements he made earlier this year about Israel’s military budget.
This week’s incidents come amid the increasing erosion of the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed on the Golan Heights. Peacekeepers have been repeatedly kidnapped by opposition forces seeking the regime’s overthrow. Today Austria declared that it may withdraw its forces if the West chooses to supply weapons to the rebels:
Vienna’s warning was aimed at Britain and other allies which want to help Syrian rebels by lifting an EU arms embargo – doing so, minister Gerald Klug told Reuters, would rob Austrian troops of their neutrality in a Syrian conflict that has already seen foreign peacekeepers come under fire and some even held hostage. He stopped short of saying an end to the EU arms ban would automatically prompt the departure of the 380 Austrian soldiers. But their withdrawal after four decades keeping the peace since the 1973 Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war would leave a huge hole in the already troubled, 1,000-strong U.N. force separating two of the world’s biggest armies, which are technically still at war.
The combination of UNDOF’s weakness and Syria’s more aggressive posture may force Israel to take more direct action to reestablish deterrence along the Israeli-Syrian border.
[Photo: Nadavspi / Wiki Commons]
