Israel Strikes Southern Syria, Kills Syrian Soldier

Israel fired a surface-to-surface missile against a military site in southern Syria’s Quneitra. The attack killed a single Syrian soldier, wounded two more, and damaged a military vehicle.

Israeli officials were unusually forthcoming about why they attacked, claimed an “abnormal” Syrian violation of Israeli sovereignty earlier in the day, in which a Syrian anti-aircraft system fired at an Israeli warplane.

 Israel insists the warplane was in northern Israeli airspace, and Syria has claimed it was aggression against them. The air defense system was reportedly the target of the Israeli missile attack.

The indication is the warplane was on the fringe between the Israeli occupied Golan Heights and the Syrian side, and given how many times Israel has just attacked Syria out of the blue from that area, Syria may have just assumed it was another attack and reacted.

Israeli officials are now playing up a “zero-tolerance” policy along the frontier, and trying to spin this as something to do with Iran. As with recent Saudi flare-ups in Yemen, this is likely being done for the benefit of US hawks looking for a pretext to attack Iran.