The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a Telegram channel that it struck a military post in the Tasil area in southern Syria in response to a shell fired from Syria into northern Israeli territory in the Golan Heights on Thursday.
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“A shell fired from Syria toward the southern Golan Heights on Thursday landed in an open area, causing no casualties. In response, IDF forces attacked a military post in the Tasil area in southern Syria,” the army press service said in a statement.
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On Wednesday, the army reported attacks on Syria’s military infrastructure, accusing Damascus of violating the border established as part of the 1974 agreement on the separation of forces between Israel and Syria in the buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
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Until 1967, the Golan Heights were part of the Syrian province of Quneitra, inhabited mainly by Druze, a distinct ethno-religious group of Arabs. During the Six Day War of 1967, as well as the Fourth Arab-Israeli War in 1973, two-thirds of this strategic territory was captured by Israel. In 1981, the Jewish state unilaterally declared sovereignty over the region, but the UN Security Council did not recognize this decision. On March 25, 2019, then US President Donald Trump recognized the occupied Golan as Israeli territory.
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During the war in Syria, most of the heights not under Israeli control were captured by anti-government groups, and only in the summer of 2018 these areas were returned to the control of Damascus.
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The 1974 UN mandate that established the international organization’s peacekeeping force in the region describes Bravo as a line that Syrian troops cannot cross. For the second party to the conflict, the Israeli army, a similar line was designated – the Alpha Line in the western, higher part of the region.
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Between the two lines there is a demilitarized zone under the responsibility of the UN mission.
