WarSclerotic

Golan Heights residents fear Syria conflict creeping closer, Israel Hayom, Danny Brenner, August 28, 2014

“Who will pay the price? All the residents of the Golan Heights. The militants of ISIS will not differentiate between us. They will kill everyone. We see videos on TV, Facebook. The danger is getting closer to us,” Golan resident Badi’a Ahmed says.

Smoke rises from explosions in the Golan Heights caused by nearby fighting in Syria | Photo credit: JINI

Residents of the Golan Heights say fighting across the border in conflict-torn Syria is creeping closer to them.

Syrian rebels, including fighters from an al-Qaida-linked group, seized control of a frontier crossing with Israel in the Golan Heights on Wednesday after heavy clashes with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, activists and rebels said.

On Wednesday, stray fire from the fighting resulted in an Israeli officer and a civilian being wounded. The officer was moderately wounded by an errant mortar round and the civilian suffered light wounds from an errant Syrian tank shell which hit a kibbutz winery he was working at. The officer was airlifted to a local hospital.

Shortly after the incident, local media reported that Syrian rebels took hold of the Quneitra border crossing.

“Who will pay the price? All the residents of the Golan Heights. The militants of ISIS will not differentiate between us. They will kill everyone. We see videos on TV, Facebook. The danger is getting closer to us,” Golan Heights resident Badi’a Ahmed said.

Another resident of Golan Heights, Khaled Safadi also worried. “This is the reality that danger is getting close to us,” he said.

Shelling from the Syrian civil war has occasionally spilled over onto the Golan, including what Israel has said were deliberate attacks on its troops.

Shimon Ben Shushan, 25, from Katzrin, was standing mere feet from his father when a tank shell fired from Syria exploded in the kibbutz winery they were in and lightly wounded his father. According to Ben Shushan, a half hour before the tank shell exploded there had been another explosion in the western part of the Kibbutz and as a result the owner of the winery decided to evacuate his family members who were there at the time.

“A half hour later the shell hit the winery,” Ben Shushan said on Wednesday. “I was with my father in the production area of the factory. My father, who is in charge of assuring the winery’s kashrut, got out of the production area seconds before the shell exploded in the office. I ran to see what happened and was engulfed by a gray cloud of dust and there was a sharp smell of gunpowder in the area. My father was lucky to be standing between wine barrels,” he said.

Ben Shushan’s father was in the office only 15 seconds before the tank shell exploded in it. “It was a real miracle. The explosion caused ricochets to fly everywhere and one of them cut my dad on the back of his neck.” Ben Shushan says his father was saved by standing between the wine barrels.

While the Syrian army has a presence on the Golan, some areas are controlled by rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, including al Qaida-inspired militants hostile to Israel.

Kenan Mohammed, a spokesman for the Western-backed Syrian opposition, said rebels aimed to push Assad’s troops from all of Quneitra. He also said opposition forces posed no threat to Israel.

“Our aim isn’t Israel right now, and we in the [Free Syrian Army] haven’t targeted Israeli lands,” he said, adding that the rebels’ focus is on Assad and the extremist Islamic State group. “The matter of Israel — it’s not for now, and it’s more political.”

This entry was posted on August 28, 2014 at 6:52 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Golan Heights