Israel shoots down Syrian jet over Golan Heights
ISRAEL said yesterday it shot down a Syrian warplane that entered airspace above the Golan Heights as internal fighting just across the border in Syria intensified during a government offensive to retake rebel areas.
The downing of the jet comes at a time when Israel has been pressing to ensure that its security concerns in Syria are addressed as President Bashar al-Assad’s forces mop up remaining territory held by rebels in the south of the country.
The Israeli military said it fired two Patriot missiles at the Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet, which crossed about 2km into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The plane fell inside Syrian territory, and the fate of the pilots was unknown, Israeli officials said.
Syrian state media said that the plane had been “raiding terrorist gatherings” near the area of Wadi al-Yarmouk and was inside Syrian airspace when it was shot down.
This marked only the second time that Israel has downed a Syrian plane in more than three decades. Israel shot down another that crossed into the Golan Heights in 2014.
The Israeli military has been on high alert as fighting inside Syria has pushed closer to Israel’s northern border in recent weeks.
As the civil war in Syria has shifted in favour of Assad, who is backed by forces from Iran and Russia, Israel has had to recalibrate its approach. Israel had been supporting small rebel groups fighting on the other side of the border fence.
Despite technically being at war with Syria, Israel says it has no issue with Syrian government forces returning to areas they held prior to the civil war – as long as forces linked to Iran are excluded.
That concern was the subject of talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his visit to Israel on Monday.
An Israeli official, who declined to be named, said the Russians had offered to enforce a 100km buffer zone inside Syria free of Iranian forces. However, Israel is demanding that Iranian troops fully withdraw.
“We made clear again that we would not accept an Iranian military build-up in Syria, not near the border and not beyond the 100km strip that the Russians are talking about,” said the official.
The Israeli military has carried out more than 100 airstrikes in Syria in an effort to prevent Iranian entrenchment or the transfer of arms to its proxy, Hezbollah.
A spokesman for the Israeli military said yesterday that Israel’s policy in Syria still remains one of “non-interference”.
“For the past few days we have seen movement of Syrian forces approaching the area close to our border and all of our defensive systems have been on elevated readiness levels,” the spokesman said.
Yesterday, warnings were issued through various “channels” as a heightened amount of aerial activity took place just over the boundary.
The plane, either a Sukhoi 22 or 24, took off from the T-4 military base near Palmyra, he said. “From our perspective, this event has finished,” he said. “It is not ongoing.”
In southwest Syria, only a few small pockets remain under opposition control as Assad’s army nears the end of a monthslong offensive. In Darayyah, a city known as the birthplace of the country’s 2011 uprising, the national flag is flying over state institutions once again.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967. (© Washington Post)