Tensions amid growing humanitarian crisis in Syria
A spokesman for the pro-government National Defense Forces in southern Syria said that an Israeli attack on a Syrian military base killed three members of its group and wounded two others. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said it remained unclear if the source of the bombardment in Quneitra province was an air strike or shelling.
The presumed Israeli attack came after three mortar shells from Syria landed in the Golan Heights on Friday night, apparently spillover from the conflict. Israel has carried out air strikes or fired mortar rounds during the six-year war in Syria, often in response to the occasional spillover, including stray shells from fighting among Syrian factions.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the reports. The Syrian army could not immediately be reached for comment. The NDF said the attack struck its military camp in the countryside of Quneitra, which sits near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, territory that Israel captured from Syria in a 1967 war.
Israeli analysts said they do not believe that the situation on the border between Israel and Syria will deteriorate.
“The situation is quite stable,” Guy Bechor, a Middle East expert at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya told The Media Line. “I don’t foresee any mutual attacks. The other side is too occupied with itself and its own conflicts. They have no interest in bothering with Israel.”
Bechor said that Israel does not care if Assad remains in power in Syria, as is seeming more likely after more than six years of civil war, or if Assad is forced to resign. Other analysts say that what Israel does not want is chaos in Syria, especially in the Golan Heights.
Last month, Syria fired a missile into Israel, following an Israeli strike in Syria on an apparent weapons convoy that was meant for Hizbullah. Israel has previously struck several of these convoys if they contained what Israel called “game-changing weapons.” In all of the previous cases, Syria did not comment publicly and did not respond.
This time, Syria fired at least one rocket into Israel, believed to be outdated Russian-made SA-5 surface-to-air missiles. The Israeli planes were not hit, but one of the rockets, or a piece of one, was identified and intercepted over the Jordan Valley, north of Jerusalem.
An initial Israeli Air Force investigation found that the missile had a 200-kilogram warhead, and that the crew that activated the Arrow 2 Defense system reached the decision to intercept the missile in less than a minute.
“We didn’t care if it was a surface-to-surface missile or a surface-to-air missile. There were no dilemmas or doubts, no budgetary considerations,” an Israeli air force officer told the Ynet News Agency. “The missile was supposed to hit the Jordan Valley. The Arrow was chosen in accordance with the level of threat and the availability of the defense systems on hand. There was no other option except to intercept. We operate with manual control, since you can never know how a given missile would ‘behave’ in flight. Its engine or other components can decompose along the way, changing its intended course.”
Despite the tensions, most Israeli experts said they believed that the conflict will not escalate.
“Syria is a non-state for the time being and is not a serious challenge for the Israeli army,” Tzvi Magen, a long-time Israeli diplomat and former Israeli Ambassador to Russia told The Media Line. “With Russia is it is more complicated. Israel, along with Russia, the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, are all regional actors in Syria. Russia is waiting for President Trump’s decision about his policy in the Middle East.”
The tension between Israel and Syria comes amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Syria and fears that the world has lost interest in the fighting there.
“Our main concern is that continued armed conflict and any future escalation or violence will not help the Syrian people and will only worsen the humanitarian conditions,” Firas al-Khateeb, a spokesman for UNHCR in Damascus told The Media Line. “There are 13.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance as well as five million who have already fled the country as refugees.”
Khateeb said there is a certain amount of “media fatigue” as well as “donor fatigue” when it comes to Syria. He said the international community should do more to help Syria.
“There is a shortage of medicine, food, clean water and electricity,” he said. “They need all of the necessities of life that people around the world take for granted.”