Early today, reports were emerging that a stray artillery shell from Syria may have found its way into the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. It didn’t quite, but it did damage the military’s fence along the line of control, providing a pretext for Israel to attack Syria some more.
Israel has repeatedly attacked the Syrian military throughout the Syrian Civil War, sometimes publicly confirming incidents and sometimes not. Today, they would only say they hit two “army targets,” but declined to offer any details.
In the past most attacks have targeted military bases, with a occasional strike on a military convoy they believe to be ferrying weapons to Hezbollah. Such attacks sometimes follow stray fire into Golan, but target Syrian military forces even if the fire came from rebel factions.
Officially, Israel is neutral, though they have repeatedly insisted that they consider ISIS “preferable” to the Assad government as a ruler of Syria, and recently Israel’s military intelligence chief expressed concern that ISIS might lose the war outright.
Israel does not want an ISIS victory.
Just like the famous Israeli quote from the Iran-Iraq war of the 80’s, they wish best of luck to both sides of the conflict.
When it seems that the tides are turning in favor of Assad’s army’, they nudge the boat a little to stay its course so the playing field remains even.
The Golan Heights is Syrian territory, snatch from Syria to control water supplies. A single strayed shell can hardly be regarded as an “attack”.