Now, this is interesting. This is from an article written in March. "Fom the Israeli-Syrian border looking down into the valley in Syria, one can see Jabat al-Nusra-occupied villages in the distance. Powerful binoculars show deserted streets and half-built or dilapidated houses, vacant for years, which now serve as seats of operations for the Syrian rebels. Jabat al-Nusra is said to number between 5,000 and 8,000, and include many foreigners. Facebook and YouTube pages that document the names and origins of dead Jabat al-Nusra fighters show that the top three countries being recruited from are Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Libya, particularly from the Benghazi area.Israeli government sources said that despite al-Nusra having set up just 14 months ago, it has carried out more attacks and inflicted more damage on the Syrian regime than any other opposition organization.Itamar Rabinovitch, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University and Israel’s former ambassador to the US, said the activities of Jabat al-Nusra are “potentially very serious, in two ways. One is that when Assad falls — and I think it’s a question of ‘when,’ not a question of ‘if,’ the central government might be replaced by an Islamist or perhaps even a jihad-oriented, radical Islamist movement. The second is that there may be a terrorist or a jihadi takeover over parts of the country, and the country could at least for a while become fragmented, with the Alawites and the Kurds having autonomy and jihadi elements … possibly even gaining control of some of the weapons of mass destruction. Some of these areas may be close to the cease-fire line with Israel, and in that case, Israel will have to deal with it.”Yet al-Qaeda-affiliated organizations are not the only threat to Israel in Syria. “Hezbollah, as a front guard of Iran, acts here, trying their best to preserve and restore Assad’s rule here,” Hirsch said. They are preparing this area as a launching site for terrorism from “here, and not*from Lebanon.”He added, “They are strongly deterred after 2006 [Israeli-Hezbollah war] in Lebanon. No one wants to see the repeat of 2006, when the population suffered a lot and Hezbollah suffered many, many casualties and damage. So they would strongly prefer to operate from the shattered Syria, the new Syria.”One Israeli university academic, an expert on Islamist movements who prefers to remain anonymous, said that Jabat al-Nusra has two aims.*In the short term, “they want to make war against Assad.”They went on, “But there’s no doubt that after they succeed in ousting Assad, they will open another front against ‘the crusaders.’ …After they succeed in the first stage, they will continue onto the ‘main’ stage: the quest for the 'Bilad el Sham' — a name in Islam for the district of Syria, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. The historical Syria, the greater Syria. There are traditions from Prophet Muhammad about the importance of this specific district in the Day of Judgement, and this is a very important foundation to the motivation of al-Qaeda for using the situation in Syria to make war against Israel.” Read more:*
Israeli Soldiers Enter Syrian Golan Heights - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
