Israel's next war may be with Gaza, but not Syria

By Douglas Hamilton / Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - If Israel goes to war with any of its neighbors before this year ends it will be with Gaza not Syria, despite appearances.

The Israeli army fired into Syria on Monday for the second day in a row, after a Syrian mortar round from fighting across the disengagement line hit the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Sunday's Israeli missile was a warning shot. Monday's tankfire scored a direct hit, the army said. There was no immediate word on any casualties. But it was the "message" Israel had warned would come.

"There were five incidents of supposed errant fire from small arms or mortars," Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon told Army Radio on Monday before the second incident.

"We sent verbal messages. This didn't help. So yesterday, for the first time, we sent a physical message," he added. "If the message was understood, good. If the message was not understood, we will need to send other messages of the kind."

Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad have been fighting his army for months in towns inside and adjacent to the Area of Separation between Israel and Syria, along the disengagement line drawn at the end of their 1973 war.

Technically they are still at war, but it is a cold war.

For almost 40 years the Golan has been one of Israel's quietest fronts, and despite the close-up view of the Syrian civil war they now have from windy Golan outposts, Israeli generals are not expecting things to heat up in the north.

"In my estimation, there is almost no doubt that he has no interest in opening a front," Yaalon said of the beleaguered President Assad. "All he needs now would be for us to hit him."

But down south, real war clouds are gathering over the Gaza Strip, the blockaded coastal enclave from where Islamist Palestinian fighters are firing rockets at Israel, and in return are being picked off by Israeli air force strikes.

"In the past month, over 20 terrorists and some civilians have been killed in the Gaza Strip and dozens have been wounded," Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Sunday. "The shooting has not stopped even today, even at this hour."

NO REFEREE

Unlike the Golan, where 1,000 United Nations peacekeepers patrol the farmland and hills separating Syrian and Israeli army positions, Gaza has no referee to keep the peace. It is fenced off, but the Israel army patrols both sides of the fence.

In December of 2008, repeated rocket fire that was spreading fear and misery among communities in southern Israel triggered an Israeli onslaught. Operation Cast Lead began with a week of bombing and shelling, followed up by a ground offensive.

Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, the majority civilians, and 13 Israelis lost their lives. Israel was strongly condemned by critics who called it a disproportionate use of force.

But after a years-long spell of relative calm, the low-level conflict with Gaza has intensified this year, with waves of retaliatory violence flaring ever more frequently.

The last burst was just two weeks ago. Ominously, the Islamist Hamas movement, which rules the enclave and dominates smaller militant groups, has stopped trying to keep the peace and reverted to firing its own rockets along with Islamic Jihad and others.

Barak says the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will respond.

"Under my instruction the IDF ... is exploring the possibilities of increasing the response to Hamas and the other terror groups and we will hit the terror groups at an ever-growing pace," he said on Sunday.