(Ha'aretz) Amos Harel - According to Brig. Gen. Tamir Haiman, the outgoing commander of the IDF's 36th Division in the Golan Heights, there is a growing enclave of radical Islamic terror on Israel's border with Syria. In the summer of 2012, the most radical of the rebels, described as al-Qaeda-inspired global jihadists, established an enclave in the southern Golan, the largest of three rebel enclaves opposite the Israeli border. According to Haiman, the number of global jihadist rebels in the southern Golan has gone from 300 to almost 10,000. "They have a clear set of priorities: toppling the Assad regime and making sharia, religious Muslim law, the law of the land in every location they control. Israel is currently fairly low on their agenda, but who's to say they can't operate simultaneously and target us too?" Israel's preparations have included rebuilding the border fence (more than 60 of 84 km. have already been completed), the addition of observation posts and other intelligence-gathering means, and upgrading the quality of Israeli forces deployed along the border.
2013-08-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive