Israel is "closely following what is happening on our borders," Netanyahu tells Knesset plenum in response to questions about Druse under threat in Syria.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday addressed the threat to the Druse community in Syria which has come under threat in recent weeks amid advances by the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and Islamic State.Speaking during an opposition-initiated Knesset debate on "the government's abandonment of the periphery," Netanyahu said that Israel is "closely following what is happening on our borders. I suggest that everyone who is dealing with the issue, who finds it important, make due with this statement for now."
Netanyahu said he ordered "to do what is necessary" to help Syria's Druse.
Israel signaled readiness on Tuesday to intervene if Syrian refugees were to throng to its armistice line on the Golan Heights, after Israel's Druse Arab minority stepped up a public campaign to help brethren caught up in the civil war next door.
Israel has sought to keep out of the four-year-old crisis in Syria – an old foe from which it captured the strategic Golan in the 1967 war, and where it fears more belligerent Islamist fighters could take over should President Bashar Assad fall.
IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Moti Almoz said the top brass had held a Golan assessment on Tuesday “as part of the common cause and blood-alliance between us and our Druse brothers in the State of Israel.”
But in a statement posted on Facebook, Almoz said the Israeli side of the Golan was “calm, without irregular events.”
He also said that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot had ordered no change to current deployments.
For his part, Eisenkot said in a closed-door meeting that the IDF was prepared to help refugees on the Syria-Israel border and would do everything possible to keep them from being massacred.
He pointed out that there were hundreds of thousands of refugees in Syria, and many more in Jordan and Lebanon.
Eisenkot also said Hezbollah was in strategic distress, having lost hundreds of fighters in the Syrian war – 100 in the last month alone.
At the same time, though, he said Hezbollah was improving its capabilities in the use of armed drones, missiles and rockets.
Likud MK Ayoub Kara, a member of the Druse minority himself, meanwhile, said he would appeal to the government to allow humanitarian aid and Israeli Druse to cross the border to aid their brethren.
Ariel Ben Solomon, Yaakov Lappin and Reuters contributed to this report.
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-on-plight-of-Syrias-Druse-Ive-ordered-to-do-what-is-necessary-406310
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