ISIS (Da’esh) terror fighters in southern Syria are nearing the border with Israel in the Golan Heights, sources said over the weekend. IDF officials are watching closely.
The leaders of both Da’esh and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror organization threatened Israel over this weekend — but military officials have their eye on ISIS. The terror entity is in southern Syria and heading for that country’s border with northern Israel in the Golan Heights, according to military sources and Israeli media.
Also of concern is the fact that Da’esh has established branch bases in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, along the Iraqi-Jordanian border, and in Gaza – thus effectively surrounding Israel and her allies on three sides as well. The terror group is also well established in Nigeria, Libya and Somalia.
“Within a few days, we will conquer the Syrian border with Israel,” a spokesperson for Da’esh told journalists this weekend.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group is continuing to fight — and lose scores of men — on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad as Syria’s civil war continues into its fifth year. They are joined by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, who direct the fighting.
“Millions” of Israelis will be displaced and become “refugees” in any war between Hezbollah and the Jewish State, terror leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened Friday. In a speech broadcast on the Hezbollah-linked Al Manar TV station, Nasrallah said, “In Israel, they are aware of the power of Hezbollah and recently they conducted exercises which showed their concern about our ability to strike their Home Front with strength, and defeat them.”
Nasrallah was referring in his remarks to the “Turning Point” civil defense drill carried out each year at this time in Israel by Home Front Command. The nationwide exercise tests wartime readiness and cooperation by various emergency response and municipal agencies as well as that of the general population.
Today for the most part Syria is no longer; it has been carved up into a collection of small fiefdoms or emirates, each headed by a leader pledged to one of the terror groups. Very few areas are still controlled by the moderate, Western-backed Free Syrian Army that was once the hope of so many.
Even fewer areas are controlled by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who apparently has resigned himself to the takeover of his nation by ISIS and has chosen not to target the terror group in his attacks.
And although his Iranian allies have made a great show of “helping to protect” Iraqis against ISIS and doing the same with Yemenis via the Houthi rebels, the truth is much more complicated.
It’s not really clear, for instance, how passionately the Islamic Republic is actually fighting Da’esh in Yemen or in Iraq — if at all — but it is crystal clear that Iran is not harassing ISIS north of Israel’s border.
In fact, it is probably just a matter of time before Iran openly patronizes the terrorist entity, if only to help in the attempt to annihilate Israel.
The once-proud nation of Syria is bloodied and worn, torn apart with years of internal warfare that really just began with a revolution against President Assad as part of the Arab Spring.
But that was long ago, before Assad recruited his allies, Iran and Russia, to help him in his war against his own people.
Before the Syrians who were fighting to raise a new government themselves, began to fight each other and instead split into factions.
Before the fundamentalist Islamist factions among them suddenly discovered they had attracted foreign fighters as well, like Al Qaeda and Da’esh – the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The latter was considerably more extreme than most had expected or bargained for and once present, they stayed.