![]() ![]() On its southern borders, Israel has long faced rocket attacks from armed Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip and has watched with concern the rise of Islamist militancy in Egypt’s Sinai desert. Some 20,000 Israeli settlers live on the Golan and the strategic plateau overlooks Israeli towns and villages along the Sea of Galilee. While the fall of Assad, an ally of Israel’s enemy Iran, could be in the Jewish state’s interest, a descent into chaos on the Golan Heights would pose a new security challenge. “We simply do not know who will control the territory next to the border.” “Tension in the Golan Heights is the highest it has been since 1974,” a senior Israeli military officer in the area told Reuters this week. Israel, which returned fire in some of those incidents, believes that around one in 10 of the rebels are Sunni Muslim radicals. In recent months, battles between Assad loyalists and rebels have raged in some villages on the Syrian foothills of the Golan, with mortar shells and machinegun fire spilling across into Israeli-occupied territory. ![]() Israel is worried that the Golan, which it captured from Syria in 1967, will become a springboard for attacks on Israelis by jihadi fighters, who are taking part in the armed struggle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Small Israeli military lookout posts abandoned for years have been put into action and regular military and special forces have replaced reservists at many points. Israeli soldiers clean a tank close to the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria on the Israeli occupied Golan Heights April 7, 2013.
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