Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a meeting on Thursday with the heads of the defense establishment to discuss the developments in Syria.
The decision to hold the meeting comes after the rebels took control of Syria's 5th largest city, Hama, and the concerns are increasing that the Asad regime may collapse.
Two senior Israeli officials told Axios that Israeli intelligence was startled by the faster-than-expected collapse of the Syrian army's defense over the past 24 hours, with one official saying that the fall of Damascus seems more likely than it had until very recently.
According to the official, "The Syrian military forces are not really fighting." Adding that Israel currently does not "think the regime is in immediate danger, but this is the biggest challenge for the Assad regime in the last decade."
Israel is currently caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the possible outcomes of the fighting in Syria. On the one hand, many of the rebel groups hold radical Islamist ideologies and have even been classified as terror groups by the US and other countries; on the other hand, the Assad regime is backed by Iran, and Israel is determined to prevent the Islamic Republic from bringing more forces and weapons into the neighboring country.