Syria reportedly moves brigades away from Golan
Redeployment could open northern Israeli border to attacks from Syrian rebels
Syria has redeployed thousands of elite troops once stationed in its section of the Golan Heights, across Israel’s border, to locations elsewhere in Syria where they are needed to fight rebel forces, Western diplomats said Sunday.
The move, carried out over recent weeks, is the most significant strategic development in the Golan Heights in 40 years, according to Western sources quoted by the Guardian, and opens up the Syrian side of the Golan to control of rebel forces, a scenario feared by Israel.
“They [the Syrian government] have moved some of their best battalions away from the Golan,” a Western diplomatic source told the Guardian. “They have replaced some of them with poorer-quality battalions, which have involved reducing manpower. The moves are very significant.”
The changes come at a time when the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, the international force that has been charged since 1973 with monitoring the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire, has shown signs of reduced effectiveness.
In February, Croatia withdrew its forces from the UN operation, and according to an Israeli government official several other participant countries are also considering pulling out due to the volatile situation in Syria, a situation he called “problematic.”
The Israeli-Syrian border has been extremely quiet since the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but that has changed since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. There have been sporadic instances of cross-border fire, most recently last week, when Israeli forces fired at a Syrian army position, hours after an IDF troops patrolling the border came under fire.
UNDOF forces have also come under occasional fire, most recently in March.
In addition, in recent months several groups of wounded Syrians have approached the border seeking medical attention, sometimes for serious injuries, which Israel has provided. In February for the first time, several wounded Syrians were treated in hospitals inside Israel, and the government has announced plans to set up a field hospital on the border to deal with the situation.