Source: Ha'aretz
Oct 25, 2006
Syria has reportedly placed its armed forces on a higher state of alert, citing concerns over an Israeli military exercise currently underway on the Golan Heights.
The Syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad has been making threatening noises against Israel since the Jewish state's war against the Lebanese Hizb'allah last July.
Military analysts believe Syria is preparing to play a major part in any regional military response to an American or Israel attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Damascus also regards the Golan as its own, although the area was part of ancient Israel and was included in the territory earmarked for a Jewish national homeland in the early 1900s.
The Syrians controlled the Heights for just 19 years, using it as a shooting platform from which to kill Jews in the Upper Galilee until the IDF threw them off in 1967.
Israel's military presence on the Golan has kept the frontier with Syria the quietest of all Israel's borders.