IDF on Mount Hermon preparing for Iran-backed terrorism

Since start of Russian air involvement, more assertive Assad regime has retaken several posts in Syrian Golan.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Updated: NOVEMBER 2, 2015 09:09
An IDF soldier looks out from a position on Mt. Hermon (photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
An IDF soldier looks out from a position on Mt. Hermon
(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
IDF units on Mount Hermon, which borders Syria, are preparing to encounter Iranian- backed terrorist attacks, a senior military source told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
According to the source, units operating under the command of the Mount Hermon Territorial Brigade have been training to respond to a “combined terrorist attack” that could involve border bombs, rockets, an attempted kidnapping of soldiers and possible anti-tank missile fire.
“There is someone who gets up every morning and asks, how can I carry out an attack on Israel? Most of the time, they run into great difficulties,” the source said.
The terrorists, he stressed, are being orchestrated by the Iranian- led radical axis, which currently controls just one small area bordering Israel, in and around the Syrian Druse village of Khadr.
A variety of Sunni rebels have control of all other areas bordering Israel. On a daily basis, rebel battalions based in nearby abandoned villages such as Bijan, exchange fire with pro-Assad military forces based in Khadr, as the Hermon Brigade watches from the mountain peaks above.
Israel does not wish to be dragged into the Syrian civil war, but it is closely monitoring the rapid changes sweeping the area. Most recently, since Russia began providing air support to the Assad regime, the Syrian army has become more assertive and has retaken several posts on the Syrian Golan lost in previous battles to the rebels.
Meanwhile, a battle for hearts and minds is raging in Khadr. In April, the IAF struck and killed four terrorists from Khadr who crossed into Israel from Syria and planted explosives near an abandoned IDF post. Other past incidents also involved residents of the village.
Yet like all Syrian communities along the border, Israel has also provided hospital treatment to long-suffering civilians from this village who have sustained horrific injuries.
Many residents “understand that Israel is not as terrible as they were led to believe” as a result of these humanitarian acts, the source said.
Nevertheless, the Iranian-led radical axis consisting of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps., Assad regime loyalist forces and Hezbollah are still very much present in Khadr and could be plotting the next attack.

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“The other side thinks carefully about whether it wants to open a front against Israel. We are the fortified wall that will not allow this front to open,” the military source said. “Every breach [of our security] receives a clear answer.”
In the past, the threat was a Syrian army commando raid exploiting foggy weather to seize territory on the Golan.
Today, the source stated, “I’m not thinking about the Syrian commando unit, which is down to a third of its original size, and is busy defending Damascus. The current threats are Iranian-backed terrorist organizations, and this is a different type of threat that requires us to prepare our forces in a different way.”
The IDF has adapted by giving middle- and lower-ranking field officers more autonomy and flexibility and abandoning set, hierarchical military decision-making patterns that no longer fit the asymmetric threat from the other side of the border.
“The threat is changing. It is less static, and more mobile. It changes every day. If we remain fixed in our ways, we will no longer be relevant,” the officer said.
Battalion and company commanders must be familiar with past protocol, but then “reset” them and come up with new ways of dealing with the enemy, while seizing the initiative, he added.
Military units on the Golan Heights work closely with Military Intelligence and receive daily information on enemy activities rather than just big-picture strategic intelligence that once flowed in to the Hermon Brigade.
But, the source said, units on Mount Hermon are preparing for the scenario of attacks that do not come with prior intelligence warnings.
The source spoke two days after Syrian media reports said IAF jets attacked a Hezbollah weapons convoy in Syria, the type of incident that has led to attacks from Syria in the past.