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There Are Fears of New Conflicts at One of Israel’s Quietest Borders

Israel on watch as once-quiet Golan Heights border rumbles with sounds of war. 

There Are Fears of New Conflicts at One of Israel’s Quietest Borders
Israeli soldiers patrol a border in northern Israel. (Photographer: Debbie Hill/Bloomberg News)

(Bloomberg) -- A reinforced deployment of tanks and heavy guns is parked along Israel’s frontier with Syria as the civil war that transformed the balance of power in the Middle East appears headed into its final stretch.

The fighting in Syria has come full circle as its army sets its sights on retaking Daraa province, where the regime’s brutal reaction to anti-government graffiti on a school wall sparked the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011. The offensive against one of the last two major opposition strongholds has brought Syrian forces close to the Israeli-held section of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

There Are Fears of New Conflicts at One of Israel’s Quietest Borders

As the thud of shells echoes across what has for decades dependably been Israel’s quietest frontier, fears of new conflicts have risen.

Iran, whose forces helped to propel Assad to the brink of total victory, has a presence on the doorstep of archenemy Israel. With the U.S. on the sidelines, only Russia has the clout to prevent the Israeli military from being drawn deeper into what remains of Syria’s war.

“None of us here is foolish enough to believe things will just go back to the way they were,” said Qasem Sabagh, a member of the Golan Druze community that came under Israeli control, as he looked out at a United Nations post where Syrian relatives once came to shout greetings through a loudspeaker. “The entire world wants a piece of Syria -- Iran, the U.S., Israel, Russia.”

Turning the Tide

It was Russia’s military intervention in Syria in September 2015 that turned the course of the war in Assad’s favor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Russia on Wednesday for the eighth time since it entered the conflict. He’s said he’ll press for Iran’s ejection from Syria and demand that Syria “strictly” uphold the 1974 disengagement accord that set out a buffer zone.

Read more: Netanyahu to Discuss Syria Red Lines in Meeting with Putin

There Are Fears of New Conflicts at One of Israel’s Quietest Borders

Both objectives are complicated, and if they’re not achieved, the Middle East could see the first head-to-head war between regional powers since Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Several confrontations have taken place in the past few days. Over the weekend, a mortar shell from Syria exploded in the buffer zone, provoking Israeli artillery fire. Syria accused Israel of attacking the T-4 airbase used by the Syrian air force and Iran’s Quds Force. And Wednesday, the Israeli military, without giving further details, said its missile defenses shot down a drone that infiltrated Israel’s airspace from Syria.

“Any Syrian soldier who enters the buffer zone endangers his life,” Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Tuesday. “We are not prepared to accept any Iranian presence in Syria.”

Israel has already carried out numerous strikes against Iranian targets in Syria and arms convoys bound for the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside Assad’s forces.

Yet after backing Assad for seven years, Iran and its allies won’t easily give up the military infrastructure they have built close to Israel, including militias, bases and a drone operation, according to the Israelis.

Iran’s presence in Syria “is part of their regional influence,” said Ibrahim Hamidi, diplomatic editor for the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. “They can use the border as leverage against the West and Israel.”

Trump-Putin Summit

Iran’s postwar role in Syria will be at the top of the list when President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Helsinki on July 16, a senior Russian official said. Putin has agreed in principle to U.S. and Israeli demands to replace pro-Iranian forces in southern Syria with troops loyal to Assad, two Kremlin advisers said.

But Russia’s ability to enforce the emerging agreement with Trump is questionable.

There will be limits to how far Putin will press Iran, and his strategy is to find a middle ground between the conflicting interests of major players, said Andrei Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research group that advises the Kremlin.

The Russian leader may agree to keep letting Israel bomb Iranian convoys transporting advanced weapons to Hezbollah while allowing Iran to maintain a route for arms supplies to Hezbollah that would stretch from Iran through Syria to Lebanon, he said.

Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have repeatedly encouraged U.S. officials -- including Trump while still a presidential candidate -- to consider lifting Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia in return for Putin’s help in expelling Iranian forces from Syria, the New Yorker reported on July 9. The magazine said White House officials didn’t respond to its request for comment.

Another idea circulating in Washington is that the U.S. would retain its military base at Tanf, near the junction of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, until Iran withdraws from Syria, Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said in an emailed analysis.

But the Iranians are deeply embedded in the Syrian security forces, and if they “stay in large numbers, the potential for greater conflict between Israel and Iran in Syria will remain high,” added Ford, now a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

Iran, some analysts said, is playing a long game. It’s sitting out the campaign in southern Syria, deeming it less risky to let Assad’s troops win back territory near the Israeli-held section of the Golan, said Omar Lamrani, senior military analyst at Stratfor, a Texas-based advisory firm.

“This is the Iranians themselves accepting that for the sake of the success of the offensive, it’s better they sit it out,” Lamrani said.

Then, at a time of their choosing, they can try to penetrate the border area, said Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Forging Alliances

In the course of the war, the Syrian section of the Golan has been the scene of battles between government forces and an array of opposition groups including rebels, Islamist forces and militants affiliated with al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Israel sought to carve out a buffer zone populated by friendly forces by secretly supplying Syrian opposition fighters with aid, medical treatment in Israel and, according to the Wall Street Journal, cash payments for weapons and fighters’ salaries. It’s also providing humanitarian aid to the thousands of Syrians camped out in tents near Israel’s frontier, hoping to find sanctuary from the government onslaught.

“We were brainwashed for decades to hate Israel,” said Hani, a resident of southern Syria being treated for shrapnel wounds at Israel’s Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. “I now see that my enemy isn’t Israel, but the people who came and destroyed our village.” He declined to give his full name for fear of reprisal.

Shared enmity of Shiite Iran has allowed Israel to create quiet ties with Sunni-led Gulf Arab states that once shunned it. By that same token, Israel’s support for the Sunnis in Syria against government and Iran-backed forces wasn’t a failed investment, said Sami Nader, head of the Levant Institute for Strategic Studies in Beirut.

“They don’t hate Israel anymore or see it as a threat,” Nader said. “Israel is not seen as the worst enemy.”

To contact the reporters on this story: David Wainer in Tel Aviv at dwainer3@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net;Donna Abu-Nasr in Beirut at dabunasr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Mark Williams

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