Israel Defense Forces fired on Syrian military positions Monday morning after mortar fire from Syria landed in Israel's Golan Heights for a second straight day. This followed a week of similar incidents involving Syrian fire landing in the Golan Heights — a pattern that has led Israel to wonder whether Syrian forces may have fired these stray rounds intentionally. After retaliatory Israeli fire Monday hit a Syrian military mortar position, injuring two Syrian soldiers, Syrian officials reportedly communicated to Israel through backchannels that they "got the message" and would avoid further errant fire into Israel.
Both the Israelis and the Syrians acknowledge that Syrian regime forces were both the source of the stray rounds and the target of Israel's retaliatory fire. However, the Free Syrian Army indicated that Israel's retaliation on Sunday disrupted their operations and benefited the Syrian regime. This claim is unconfirmed, however, and likely represents an effort by the Free Syrian Army to distance itself from Israel.
Now to the question of whether these stray rounds from Syrian forces were mistaken or intentional. Israeli military spokesmen over the past week initially said that the random fire had not been intended for Israel, and that it was part of the ongoing conflict between regime and rebel forces in Syria’s neighboring Quneitra province. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu questioned that assessment Monday when he raised the prospect that Syrian forces may have intentionally fired into Israeli territory.
The case for stray fire is pretty clear: the Syrian conflict has already spilled across several other borders. Syria has repeatedly violated Iraqi airspace to conduct aerial missions against rebel positions, and Turkey has routinely retaliated against mortar strikes from Syria, some of which have been lethal. The Syrian mortars and light arms fire that crossed into Israel fell just inside the border and didn't cause significant damage or harm to human life. If they were targeted, they certainly didn't intend to do damage.
If the fire turns out to be intentional, the situation gets much more interesting. The Golan Heights are an extremely sensitive region of Israel's territory. They occupy the gap between Mt. Hermon and the Sea of Galilee; this is the path Syria would most likely take if it were to attack Israel. Syria was able to exploit its elevation advantage in the Golan Heights to harass Israeli border towns throughout Israel's early days of independence until the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel established military control over the heights. Israel solidified control over the Golan Heights when it repelled Syrian advances in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It has been relatively peaceful since, but due to the area's strategic significance and its history, Israel cannot afford to take chances in the Golan Heights.
Syria and the rest of Israel's neighbors are aware of this and know that Israel will take seriously any stray fire that lands in the Golan Heights, even if it appears innocuous. So the question is what would motivate Syrian forces to intentionally fire on Israeli territory. There are no indications that Israel provoked Syria to fire into the Golan Heights. Israel even tolerated several incidents of cross-border fire before retaliating. It isn't publicly (and most likely isn't privately) harboring Syrian rebel forces along its border the way Turkey is. Syrian rebels have made it pretty clear that they have no affinity for Israel.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad and his regime are facing a growing insurgency that has withstood everything Syria’s military has thrown at them. Al Assad's position is tenuous and, as Stratfor has pointed out, he is more a warlord now than a leader of state. He happens to be the most powerful warlord, but he cannot claim to control all of Syria. One of the few options he has left to rally the population behind him is a foreign intervention. Turkey, despite numerous provocations, has not indicated that it is willing to intervene in Syria. The West, despite its rhetoric, also shows no intention of getting militarily involved. Israel has so far succeeded in staying out of the conflict, but striking at one of its most vulnerable points could be an attempt to provoke it into war. The Syrian regime has no illusions about taking back the Golan Heights, but if they can drag the Israelis into their own domestic conflict, the Syrian regime could manufacture a foreign threat around which the country could rally.
The likelihood of success for such a strategy is small. Israel has little incentive to get involved in the Syrian conflict and has all the means necessary to conduct precise, timely and symmetrical retaliations against cross-border fire to avoid an escalation along the border. But with options running out for al Assad, he may calculate that the maneuver is at least worth attempting.
The latest word from Syria is that the Israeli counterstrikes drove the message home, indicating that Syria will use more discretion in targeting strikes along its border with Israel. If the coming days bring no further stray fire into Israel, then these rounds likely constituted accidental events in the Syrian civil war. However, if the mortars and light arms fire keep coming, the likelihood that these incidents were mistakes decreases and would suggest that the al Assad regime has reached a new level of desperation.
