Israeli-Syrian border
Israeli-Syrian borderAFP photo

The Syrian regime’s army has the green light to respond to any future Israeli attack without referring back to its “leadership,” a Syrian lawmaker told a Lebanese television station on Wednesday, according to Al Arabiya.

“Next time, if Israel dares to breach the Syrian airspace, there are orders to retaliate with fire and missiles without referring back to the leadership,” Ahmad Shalash told the al-Mayadeen television network which is close to the Hizbullah terror group.

“Let it all out, they want an open war, let it be an open war, we don’t have a problem,” he was quoted as having said.

Shalash vowed that the Syrian regime army will continue to fight for embattled President Bashar Al-Assad to “the ends of world.”

Assad told Hizbullah’s Al-Manar television last week that there was "popular pressure" to open a military front against Israel on the Golan Heights, and warned his country would bomb Israel if it attacks Syria again.

“There is clear popular pressure to open a new front of resistance in the Golan," he said. “This is a political-ideological matter that will eventually turn into a military one.”

Syria’s Information Minister, Omran al-Zoubi, recently warned Israel that his country had a right to launch an operation against the Jewish State from the Golan Heights.

Al-Zoubi said that Israel committed an aggression against Syria recently by raiding military sites near Damascus. With these acts, he said, Israel violated international commitments.

"Accordingly, Syria has the right at this time and at any other time to deal with the Golan issue in the way the owner has the right to deal with his property, because the Golan is and has always been a Syrian Arab land," he said.

The Israel Hayom newspaper reported on Wednesday that Israeli defense officials believe that Hizbullah has been trying to establish a strategic foothold in the Syrian Golan Heights to facilitate attacks on Israel from that area.

Although the organization still has a long way to go before it has a permanent presence in the area, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has recently indicated the existence of such a plan, the newspaper reported.

Hizbullah may have concluded that the ongoing instability and the incessant battles between the rebels and the regime loyalists in the Golan Heights presents a fleeting opportunity to establish a base of operations in the area before it falls under the control of the rebels, should that happen.

While Israeli officials believe Hizbullah’s new infrastructure would not be set up "overnight," they stress that the terror group is determined to put this plan into action as part of its efforts to prop up the Syrian regime with the help of Iran, reported Yisrael Hayom.

Several thousand Hizbullah terrorists, some of whom hail from its elite units, are taking an active role in the fighting in Syria, and have reportedly been using rockets and anti-tank missiles on rebels.

Last week they commandeered old Russian-made Syrian tanks and used them to fight the rebels in Qusayr, a contested town on the Syria-Lebanon border.