Israeli army chief Gen. Benny Gantz on Monday warned that the Syrian rebel groups that America and Europe are now helping to arm and train might turn their hostility toward Israel after ousting the regime of dictator Bashar Assad.
"The situation in Syria has become unstable and incredibly dangerous," Gantz said at the 2013 Herzliya Conference. "Although the likelihood of war with Syria is low, the terrorist organizations fighting against Assad may see us as their next challenge."
Since the start of the Syrian civil war, Israel has warned that most of the rebel groups are backed by or branches of radical Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda, and their victory would only increase tensions along the Israel-Syria border.
Indeed, just last week Syrian rebels abducted 21 of the UN peacekeepers deployed to keep the Israel-Syria border quiet for the past 41 years. Those peacekeepers were subsequently released, but many more fled into Israel before they, too, could be taken.
On Saturday, Syrian rebels opened fire on UN troops, prompting a "very active review" into the safety of UN peacekeepers in the area. Israel's concern is that the UN will decide to pull the peacekeepers out just when they are needed most.
The entire situation is being viewed in Jerusalem as just another example of how Israel cannot trust international guarantees regarding its security, and therefore must not make major concessions that would compromise the safety of its citizens.
...the militias in their countries are mushrooming dangerously. They are bursting out of their national boundaries, nourished with arms, manpower and funding from distant sources in and beyond the Middle East.
DEBKAfile’s military sources point to the example of the Syrian army’s 17th Reserve Division, whose recent defeat in the battle for the Euphrates River in eastern Syria established a regional landmark. It removed the last gap in the 1,000-kilometer long chain of command formed by Islamist forces identified or associated with al Qaeda, which now runs contiguously from the northern outskirts of Baghdad to the eastern fringes of Damascus. The Syrian Golan, since it fell to the Islamist militias fighting with Syrian rebels, forms part of that chain.
The Battle for the Euphrates was a landmark event in that it opened the way for al Qaeda to conduct itself as a transnational force in combat. And indeed, in a recent encounter, al Qaeda in Iraq claimed victory over Syrian military units which, having crossed the border into that country, lost the battle at the cost of 48 soldiers and 9 agents dead.
Therefore, any “conflagration” in Syria, for instance, could quickly spread to Lebanon, Iraq or the Golan; and a violent incident in Egypt may emanate from or spill over into Libya, Israel or Algeria.
This eventuality was intimated in another part of the Gantz lecture: “The only permanent factor we are seeing in the last two years is that nothing is permanent. Egypt, too, which underwent a revolutionary process, has not achieved permanence; old and familiar arenas are changing and are being replaced by newer, weightier, ones,” said the chief of staff. “The threats have not gone, only assumed new shapes and when we encounter them in the future, will demand of us enhanced strength.”
Gantz went on to say: “True, we aren’t preparing to fight a regular army, but when next challenged, we shall still have to crawl through the burrows of Gaza and reach every building in Judea and Samaria.”
The general omitted reference to Iran. This may have been because a nuclear Iran represents the prospect of all-out war with a national army and is therefore the exception to the theory embodied in his lecture.
Regarding Syria, he said: “The situation in Syria has become exceptionally dangerous and unstable. Although the probability of a conventional war against the Syrian army is low, the terrorist organizations fighting Assad may next set their sights on us. The Syrian army’s tremendous strategic resources may well fall into terrorist hands.”
Israel's enemies continue to close in and the longer we remain in this pre-tribulation holding pattern, the more these enemies grow in numbers and in anti-Israeli rhetoric.
Iran is months away from their "red-line", Syria is falling into the hands of radical Islam, the border area now between Israel and Syria is becoming more unstable by the day, Egypt is already under the control of the Muslim brotherhood and that border region has become unstable, the West Bank is heating up again, and Israel's Air Force is already making trial runs over Lebanon.
We have to wonder how much longer before this powder keg erupts.
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