Israeli Strike Kill One In Southern Syria Amid Renewed Calls For Jihad (Videos)

A Merkava IV tank. FILE PHOTO: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems

An Israeli tank fired on a car in the southern Syrian governorate of al-Quneitra, killing a young man on April 3, amid a series of protests in the country against the recently approved Israeli law allowing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners.

The Syrian state-run SANA news agency was the first to report on the deadly incident, which took place close to the town of Za’rura. United Nations Disengagement Observer Force later visited the scene.

The incident was confirmed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which said that soldiers monitoring surveillance cameras identified a suspect in southern Syria who was approaching the border.

“IDF troops fired warning shots. A hit was identified,” the military said in a brief statement.

The IDF invaded the buffer zone adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights in al-Quneitra right after the fall of the regime of former president, Bashar al-Assad, more than a year ago, and has since established a series of posts there, including atop of the strategic Mount Hermon.

Israeli troops have been also conducting operations in al-Qunitra, the neighboring governorates of Daraa and Rif Dimashq on a regular basis.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry later slammed the Israeli attack, calling it a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”

It also urged the global community “to assume its legal and humanitarian responsibilities and take immediate measures to stop these repeated violations.”

In the days leading to the incident, southern Syria and much of the rest of the country witnessed a series of protests against the Israeli law allowing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners, with troops and gunmen even calling for Jihad against the IDF.

The protests renewed in some areas after the incident, again with calls for Jihad against Israel. Troops from several formations of the new Syrian military also took part in the protests, with some repeating chants affiliated with the Palestinian Hamas Movement.

These tensions come amid the American-Israeli war on Iran, which saw both allies of the Islamic Republic and the IDF launching strikes against Syria more than once.

While the latest protests in Syria were in no way supportive of Iran, they were supportive of Hamas. This may be what caused the IDF to escalate as a warning.

Syria and Israel held several rounds of talks over the past year, but efforts led by the United States to broker a security agreement between the two have largely failed. Now, an agreement seems even less likely, and a conflict between the two appears to be more plausible.

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