WarSclerotic

A Syrian official warned Tuesday night that his country will respond “soon enough” to the IDF shooting down a regime fighter jet after it entered Israel’s airspace, according to a Lebanese news site.

“Damascus is in no hurry to enter a war with Israel,” the unnamed source told El Nashra, but added that “the response to the downing of the jet will come soon enough.”

The official claimed Israel supports “terrorist centers” in southern Syria and shot down the jet to stop the regime’s operations against them.

The first step of the Syrian response would be to complete operations against those centers, he said. Afterwards “the direct response to the Israeli forces will come at the appropriate time.”

The third part of the response would be to “foil any attempt to push Syria’s allies away from the (border) area.”

Israel said it shot down the Sukhoi-model jet with a pair of Patriot missiles Tuesday after it entered some two kilometers inside Israel territory in the Golan Heights. The plane crashed inside Syria, reportedly killing its pilot.

File: A Russian Sukhoi Su-24 bomber taking off from the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia, October 3, 2015. (AFP/Komsomolskaya Pravda/Alexander Kots)

Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said Israel tried to contact the pilot several times but received no response, and so proceeded to intercept.

According to the Ynet news site, Russia protested Israel’s actions, with officials claiming the fighter had not breached Israeli airspace as Jerusalem has claimed. Israel subsequently provided them with a clear radar image proving its assertion, the report said.

The Kan public broadcaster reported that Israel had warned Moscow of the potential of military “spillover” into Israel as the regime’s forces continue to advance against rebel forces in the border area.

Kan reported that the IDF has filed a complaint with UNDOF, the UN peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights, over the jet incident. Though Israel believes the fighter pilot likely made a navigational error while carrying out bombing runs against rebel-held areas, officials still view the incident as a serious breach of Israeli sovereignty, it said.

The IDF is on “elevated alert” along the northern border because of the fighting on the Syrian side of the fence, military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said.

Danon said Israel seeks “no escalation in the region” but will protect its border.

“Israel will not tolerate any violation of our sovereignty — not from Syria, not from Gaza, not from any other enemy that threatens our security,” he said.

A picture taken on July 24, 2018 from the Tal Saki hill in the Golan Heights shows smoke rising above buildings across the border in Syria during air strikes backing a Syrian-government-led offensive in the southwestern province of Daraa. (AFP/ JALAA MAREY)

Syrian rebels surrendered their last pockets in the southwestern Quneitra and Daraa provinces last week, leading thousands of opposition fighters, their families and other civilians to evacuate to the rebel-held province of Idlib in northern Syria.

On Tuesday, government forces reached the border fence where a UN peacekeeping force is deployed at the edge of the Golan Heights for the first time since 2011, when an uprising swept through Syria against President Bashar Assad.

Minutes before the reported downing of the jet, Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV was broadcasting footage from the fence demarcating the UN buffer zone between Syrian and Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. A UN observer post could be seen just on the other side of the fence. The camera showed an Israeli post 400 meters (440 yards) away.

The Christians United for Israel organization’s Washington policy conference focused Tuesday on lobbying for a bill that would restrict Israel boycotts, among other legislative actions.

The speaking roster for the two-day conference included a video address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and live speeches by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, and Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to Washington and a senior adviser to Netanyahu. Haley has made support for Israel a central plank of her tenure at the UN.

CUFI pushed a bill that would extend some longstanding restrictions against complying with the Arab League Boycott to businesses that comply with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel. The bill has backers in both parties.

Activists met with 98 percent of lawmakers or their staff members, a CUFI spokesman told JTA.

But the speaking roster was otherwise uniformly Republican, including Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and the tone of the conference was a triumphant welcome of US President Donald Trump’s replacement of President Barack Obama. Previous conferences have had at least token Democratic representation.

“For years CUFI was at odds with the previous administration on a wide range of issues, but since President Trump took office we’ve seen one victory after another,” CUFI’s founder, Pastor John Hagee, said in a statement. “We are here in Washington advocating for issues that will strengthen the US-Israel relationship during a time when the White House is keenly interested in doing just that.”

Speaker after speaker cited Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem and his pullout this year from the Iran nuclear deal.

Also speaking was Stuart Force, the father of Taylor Force, an American slain in Israel in 2016 by a Palestinian terrorist. CUFI was one of several major movers behind a law enacted this year by Trump that slashes funding to the Palestinians as long as the Palestinian Authority continues payments to those who have killed Israelis or their families.

The Israeli Air Force shot down a Syrian fighter jet that traveled two kilometers into Israeli airspace on Tuesday afternoon, the military said. Syrian state-run media confirmed the jet was shot down but said it was inside its own airspace.

“Two Patriot missiles were fired at a Syrian Sukhoi-model fighter jet,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

The IDF said the aircraft was monitored as it approached the border with the Golan Heights.

“It penetrated two kilometers into Israeli airspace and was shot down,” the army said.

According to Sky News Arabia, the plane crashed inside southwest Syria, in the Yarmouk Basin, an area still under the control of the Islamic State terrorist group. It was not immediately clear if the pilots ejected before the fighter jet was shot down or what their condition was.

The official Syrian news outlet SANA claimed the plane was inside Syrian airspace at the time it was targeted.

According to SANA, Israel fired at “one of our war planes, which are leveling [terrorist] encampments in the Saida region on the outskirts of the Yarmouk Basin, in Syrian airspace.”

A military source quoted by SANA accused Israel of aiding “terrorists” in the country’s southwest, where the Syrian air force has been conducting extensive bombing raids throughout the day against a number of opposition groups.

This was the first time that Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet since 2014, when another Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jet entered Israeli airspace and was targeted with a Patriot missile.

File: A Russian Sukhoi Su-24 bomber lands at the Russian Hmeimin military base in Latakia province, in the northwest of Syria, on December 16, 2015. (Paul Gypteau/AFP)

It was not immediately clear if the plane was a Sukhoi-22 or a Sukhoi-24, two different types of Russian-made fighter jets in use by the Syrian Air Force, the Israeli military said.

The IDF said it had noticed increased air force activity in southwestern Syria, near the border, since the morning.

“We have passed a number of messages, in a number of languages, in order to ensure that no one violates Israeli air space,” IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters.

The spokesman said Israel has been in regular contact with the Russian military, which operates extensively in southwestern Syria, in order to prevent any conflict with Moscow.

According to the IDF, the fighter jet took off from the Iran-linked T-4 air force base in central Syria, which Israel has bombed in the past, and traveled “at high speed” toward the Golan Heights.

Conricus said there was no “confusion” about the fact that this was a Syrian fighter jet. In the past, Israel has hesitated in shooting down incoming aircraft out of concerns they might belong to Russia.

Israel stressed that it will continue to enforce the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, which requires Syria to abide by a demilitarized zone between the two countries

Minutes before the plane was shot down, Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV was broadcasting footage from the fence demarcating the UN buffer zone between Syrian and Israeli forces inside the Golan Heights. A UN observer post could be seen just on the other side of the fence.

The camera showed an Israeli post 400 meters (440 yards) away.

A Syrian fighter jet is seen in flames after it was hit by the Israeli military over the Golan Heights on September 23, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/JALAA MAREY)

“Israel has a very clear policy: No plane, and certainly not a Syrian plane, is allowed to enter our airspace” without the appropriate authorization, Israel’s former Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told Army Radio soon after Tuesday’s incident. “Any plane identified as an enemy plane is shot down,” he said.

In February of this year, the Syrian military shot down an Israeli F-16 fighter jet as it was taking part in a bombing raid against an Iranian-linked airfield in central Syria after an Iranian drone penetrated Israeli airspace, according to the IDF. The F-16’s pilot and navigator were injured as they bailed out of the aircraft, which crashed to ground in northern Israel.

Tuesday’s breach of Israeli airspace and the interception set off incoming rocket alert sirens throughout northeastern Israel, sending thousands of residents rushing to bomb shelters for the second day in a row.

An Israeli man watches the smoke trail of a David’s Sling interceptor missile in the northern Israeli city of Safed after the interceptor was fired toward a Syrian SS-21 missile, on July 23, 2018. (David Cohen/Flash90)

Residents of northern Israel reported seeing white trails in the sky.

The Safed municipality told residents that air defense systems in the area had fired interceptor missiles and said there were no special safety instructions in light of the situation.

The alarms could be heard in the Golan Heights and Jordan Valley regions, the army said.

The sirens came a day after Israel launched two David’s Sling interceptor missiles at a pair of Syrian surface-to-surface missiles carrying approximately a half ton of explosives each that appeared to be heading toward Israel, but ultimately landed inside Syria. The Israeli interceptors did not strike the Syrian missiles: one was self-detonated by the IAF; the second reportedly fell to earth inside Syria.

The military’s air defense systems that detect and track incoming missiles and rockets are less accurate immediately after a projectile is launched, as they have less information on its trajectory. As the missile or rocket flies, the systems can better predict where it is likely to land.

Monday’s incident, which ultimately turned out to have been a false alarm, was the first known operational use of the David’s Sling system, which was declared operational last year.

The David’s Sling makes up the middle tier of Israel’s multi-layered anti-missile defense network.

In recent weeks, sirens in northern Israel have been triggered by the military shooting down unmanned aerial vehicles entering Israeli airspace from Syria.

On July 13, the Israeli military used an anti-aircraft Patriot missile to shoot down a Syrian army drone that was flying over the demilitarized zone separating Israel from Syria. Two days earlier, a Syrian military unmanned aerial vehicle penetrated some 10 kilometers (six miles) into Israeli territory before it too was shot down by a Patriot missile. The IDF said it had allowed the drone to fly so deeply into Israeli territory as it was not immediately clear if it belonged to the Russian military.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.