IDF beefs up troops on Golan Heights near Syria

The Israeli army reinforced troops on the Golan Heights near the border with Syria, in light of a situational assessment by the Northern Command, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced Sunday.

While the IDF does not expect the offensive to lead to a direct clash between Israel and the Syrian army, armored and artillery forces were deployed Sunday morning as part of the IDF’s preparedness in the face of developments on the Syrian Golan Heights.

“The IDF attaches great importance to maintaining the 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria,” read the army statement, adding that while the IDF will continue to maintain the principle of non-involvement in the Syrian civil war, it will maintain its “policy of resolute response to the violation of the sovereignty of the State of Israel and the creation of a risk to its residents.”

Over the weekend, a string of Syrian rebel-held towns and villages in the southwestern part of the war-torn country accepted government “reconciliation.” This follows days of intense bombardment by the Syrian army backed by Iranian Shiite militias and Hezbollah. Russian airstrikes have pummeled the southwestern provinces of Dara’a and Quneitra in an offensive aimed at recapturing the strategic areas bordering Jordan and the Golan Heights from rebels.

Rebels surrender as the Syrian army advances, June 30, 2018 (Reuters)

At the weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will give as much humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugees near its border in the southern Golan Heights as it can, but will not allow them entry into Israel.

Israel, Netanyahu said, will demand strict compliance with the 1974 separation agreements signed with Syria. As part of those agreements, signed in Geneva in May 1974 following the Yom Kippur War, Israel agreed to leave territories in the Golan Heights beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines.

This agreement established two disengagement lines, and a buffer zone that would be monitored by UNDOF (The UN Disengagement Observer force).

Netanyahu said that he was in constant contact with the White House and the Kremlin regarding the situation in Syria, and that Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot was also in close contact with their counterparts in the US and Russia.

Israel, Netanyahu also said, was working to prevent Iran and its proxies from “establishing themselves in any part of Syria.”

Iran, Netanyahu said, is “feeling very well the renewal of economic sanctions” as a result of the US decision in May to withdraw from the nuclear deal, saying that the Iranian economy was currently at a “low point.”

Netanyahu said the US withdrawal from the deal created a “strategic reversal” in Israel’s situation. He said Israel’s goal remains to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to “break the cash machine” that the iranian nuclear agreement provided Iran, and which finances its aggression in Syria and throughout the region.

Meanwhile, Intelligence Affairs Minister Yisrael Katz wrote in a Twitter post that the world “must pass a clear message to the Iranian people: remove the regime of the ayatollahs in return for the rehabilitation of the Iranian economy.”

Katz referenced reports that four people were killed in the southern city of Khorramshahr over the weekend in protests against water shortages.

“The regime of the ayatollahs continues to pour money into funding terrorism in the Middle East, instead of setting up desalination and recycling facilities,” he wrote. Israel, he added – echoing a video message Netanyahu related to the Iranians in a video last month – has the knowledge and the ability to help.

On Thursday, IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot landed in the United States for a working visit in Washington, D.C. as a guest of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford. During his visit to the American capital, Eisenkot will be meeting with senior US military and defense officials to discuss “military cooperation in the face of significant defense challenges in the different regions of the Middle East.”

The talks focused on Israel’s concern about the regime offensive in southwest Syria which could put Iranian and Shiite militia troops close to Israel’s northern borders, a red line for Jerusalem. It is believed that the two senior military officials coordinated ways to prevent the Iranians and proxies from entrenching their troops in areas taken over from the rebels along the strategic border.

Israel took control of the 1,200 square kilometers of the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War in 1967 and unilaterally annexed the area in 1981. According to Israeli intelligence estimates there are thousands of Iranian advisers and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Syria, some 9000 Shiite militia fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and another 7,000 Hezbollah fighters.

Israel believes that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Corps and Quds forces have continued to embed themselves in Syria despite strikes against Iranian targets attributed to Israel.

Israeli officials have also met with Russian officials, with a visit to Israel by the head of Russia’s Military Police Directorate Vladimir Ivanovsky and in late May Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and IDF Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. Tamir Heyman flew to Moscow at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu where they lobbied Moscow to confront the Iranian presence in Syria. 

According to a report in Haaretz, the following week a delegation of senior Russian defense and intelligence officials visited Israel.

In early June Maj.-Gen. Tamir Heyman warned at a closed-door conference that Tehran is trying to increase their efforts and capabilities to launch rockets and establish terror cells that can penetrate into Israel and harm communities in Israel’s Golan Heights.

Displaying a map showing where Iranian forces are based in Syria, Heyman told the crowd at the conference that “you probably think, well this is because they are trying to help the Assad regime to fight terror…but there is no threat to President Assad so why do they stay? If they came in order to only assist the regime so then thank you and goodbye.”