Army says Israeli strike against Golan base kills 1 soldier

An Israeli defense official said the people killed in Friday’s air strike were Palestinian militants from the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad.

Ya’alon said Israel held the Syrian government responsible for rockets fired from a Syrian-held part of the Golan.

The Israeli Army said the rockets from Syria hit a village in upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border, setting off brush fires but causing no causalities. “We will respond with determination and strength against those who try to challenge us and we will reach them wherever they are”.

“For us this is a clear act of aggression meant by the Iranians to use the chaos in Syria to escalate tensions in the region”, he said.

“The IDF hit both the cell that carried out the firing and the Syrian forces that made it possible”.

– July 15: Warplanes strike three administrative and military targets on the Golan after the Israeli army said two rockets fired from the Syrian sector hit the Israeli-occupied side of the plateau.

The Israeli army warned the government in war-wracked Syria it will “suffer the consequences” after four rockets crashed Thursday into the north of the Jewish state and the occupied Golan.

Israeli Army Radio said that its military is on high alert and mobilized troops on its northern border with Syria.

Analysts said it was a potential game-changer.

“The assumption is that they want to send the message that a new front is open now that the situation on the ground is changing”, said Shlomo Mofaz, of the global Institute for Counter-Terrorism, near Tel Aviv.

Several days later Hezbollah retaliated, killing two Israeli soldiers.

Zakaria al-Qaq, a professor of security studies at al-Quds University in Jerusalem, said that relations between Islamic Jihad and Iran have been hurt, but not upended, over Iran’s support for Assad in the Syrian civil war and for the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The militant group has its headquarters in Damascus.

The possibility that Allan might die of his fast had drawn Islamic Jihad threats to attack Israel, which in turn deployed Iron Dome rocket interceptors outside Gaza as a precaution.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and other Israeli officials say the deal – by lifting economic crippling sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities – will leave Iran in a stronger position to fund attacks by militant groups opposed to Israel’s existence.