Demonstrations and violence in North likely just the promo for what can be expected in September ahead of Palestinian statehood declaration.
The successful infiltration on Sunday by a group of just under 100 Syrians into the Druse village of Majdal Shams on the Golan is being viewed by the IDF as just the beginning.
As demonstrations like these gain momentum ahead of the planned declaration of statehood by the Palestinians in September, this type of protest could become a common occurrence along Israel’s various borders.
On Sunday, the IDF dealt with four simultaneous fronts – Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. While all expectations were for extreme violence in the West Bank – units that were training on the Golan Heights were transferred as reinforcements to the WestBank last week – it turned out to be the quietest of the four.
The surprise was Syria. While the IDF was aware of the demonstrations that were scheduled for the border area opposite Majdal Shams – known as the “Shouting Hill” since relatives shout to each other across the border – it did not expect it to be any different than in past years.
This was a mistake, since the Northern Command did not take into account the current instability in Syria and embattled President Bashar Assad’s possible interest in turning the spotlight away from his violent crackdown on his own people to Israel.
According to senior IDF officers, Assad’s regime quietly encouraged the demonstrators to infiltrate Israel, possibly with the hope that the IDF would shoot indiscriminately, kill dozens of people and shift the world’s and the Syrian people’s focus from his ruthlessness to Israel.
“Thankfully, this did not happen, thanks to responsible action by commanders on the ground,” one senior IDF officer said.
There is also concern in the IDF that global Jihad groups which operate in Syria will takeadvantage of the lawlessness on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights – made clear by the demonstrators’ ability to cross into Israel without being stopped by the Syrian military – to attack Israel. Some of these groups are believed to have an arsenal of short-rangeKatyusha rockets that could be used to fire into Israel.
The protesters who rammed the border appeared to have mostly been Palestinian refugees who live in camps near Damascus. It is difficult to imagine that they could have traveled to the border in such numbers without the regime either approving the demonstration or at the very least turning a blind eye to it.
In the short term, the IDF will need to launch a probe to discover where it went wrong, not just in its assessments but mostly operationally to determine how 100 or so foreign nationals succeeded in breaching a border and entering sovereign Israeli territory. In the long term, the concern within the IDF is that these types of civil disturbances and so-called border protests will become routine.
Jerusalem Post
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