Quneitra crossing: Israel's red line with Syria is the border

Former National Security Council head says if Nusra Front takes control of Golan Heights, threats of radical Islam will not stop on frontiers of Israel, but spread out to Western countries. With the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's Syria wing, now reportedly in control of the Quneitra crossing between Syria and Israel on the Golan Heights, Israel must be very clear about its red lines, former National Security Council head Ya'akov Amidror said Wednesday.  “As in the previous battles between the Assad regime and the rebels, we are not in position to determine the fight or the processes in Syria,” Amidror said in a conference call organized by The Israel Project.  But, he added, “We should be very clear about our red lines: no one will cross the border, and if someone will try, we will kill him.”  Likewise, he said, Jerusalem needs to make it clear that “if someone will use rockets or artillery toward Israel, our retaliation will be immediate, and it doesn't matter if it will be the Syrian regular army or the rebels. From our point of view there is a very clear red line, and this is the border. We should not interfere on the other side of the border to save [either] one of the two sides.”

Amidror did say, however, that Israel should “be in a position to help on the basis of humanitarian needs”

anyone injured or wounded Israel has established a field hospital on the Golan Heights.  Amidror said that Israel might be the West's “front” in facing the radical Islamic movements.  “It is true about Gaza, relating to Hamas,” he said. “And it might be true about Nusra if they take control on the Golan heights. The threats of radical Islam are not going to stop on the frontiers of Israel, but the West and the democratic countries and others will have to face it near home sooner or later. “ He added that many times in history events and developments “begin with Jews, and continue with others.”

IDF directs artillery fire at Syrian army post; some 200 rebels including Al-Nusra take Quneitra crossing, engage 100 Syrian army soldiers in town.  A Syrian mortar fell in the northern Golan Heights, lighting injuring a man in a northern Kibbutz on Wednesday. MADA evacuated a lightly injured person who was hurt by the projectile, suffering a cut to his neck.  Earlier on Wednesday, an IDF officer was lightly-to-moderately wounded Wednesday by errant gun fire emanating from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, where rebels and forces loyal to the Damascus regime are embroiled in a civil war.  The IDF responded to the cross-border fire with artillery fire, directed at a Syrian army post. The military stated that "a direct hit on the target was identified. "We see the Syrian Army as responsible for all fire into Israel," an army spokesman said. There were no immediate reports of injuries on the Syrian side.  The wounded Israeli officer was airlifted to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa for medical treatment.

Between 150 to 200 rebels are engaging around 100 Assad regime soldiers in Quneitra. The rebels, who include Jabhat Al-Nusra and severa other organizations, have taken the Quneitra Crossing, but fighting continues in the town of Quneitra.  Security sources who are observing the situation said it is likely that fighting will continue, and that the Syrian army may now call for reinforcements.  The sources said the IDF is not a party to the fighting, describing the war an "an internal Syrian conflict," and that the IDF's only involvement is based on providing humanitarian aid to injured Syrian civilians, as Israel has done for the past two years.  Earlier Wednesday, the IDF instructed farmers and civilians to stay away from the border with Syria on the Golan Heights after intense fighting flared between the Syrian army and rebels in the Quneitra crossing region.

Explosions from the fighting in Syria were audible in the Israeli Golan Heights. The IDF said that three errant

mortar shells from the fighting fell in Israeli territory, damaging a pair of vehicles.  Fighting between Assad and rebels trying to seize the crossing has often spilled over into Israeli territory during the three-and-half year civil war.  Israel has returned fire into Syria on several occasions in the past after errant mortar shells hit Israeli territory.  Al Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front and other Islamist fighters have taken control of a border crossing on the line dividing Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a group monitoring the Syrian conflict said on Wednesday.  The fighters, who have vowed to "liberate" the area, captured the Quneitra post on the Syrian side from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad after fierce clashes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The organization gathers information from all sides in the Syrian war.  Rebels last year briefly took the Quneitra border crossing with Israel and now control many villages in the area.

Majdal Shams, Golan Heights (CNN) -- Rebels aided by al Qaeda-linked militants seized control of the only border crossing between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Wednesday.  The capture of the Quneitra crossing by Syrian rebels, including members of the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, represents a new dynamic in a war long feared not only for its deadly effects inside Syria but for threatening to widen into a destabilizing regional conflict.  The border crossing made headlines earlier this week, when American journalist Peter Theo Curtis was handed over on the Syrian side of the checkpoint by the al-Nusra Front to U.N. peacekeepers.   During the fighting on Wednesday between Syrian forces and rebels, three errant mortar rounds and some small-arms fire crossed into Israeli-controlled territory, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said.  An Israeli military officer was moderately injured, the IDF said on Twitter, and Israeli forces responded by striking two Syrian military positions.The Israeli military has closed the area around the border crossing.  An activist in the Golan Heights, Shamil al-Jolani, said the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiya and other rebel groups, not all of them Islamist, also were involved in  the community.  

In June 2013, rebels and Syrian forces battled for control of Quneitra. The violence prompted Austrian troops to pull out of a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights. Israel sent tanks and troops to the border for a time, as well.  Israel seized control of the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War, and fought off an attempt by Syria in 1973 to retake the rocky plateau.  In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights. It is considered to be occupied territory by the international community.