A tour along the Israel-Syria border on the Golan Heights reflects nothing of what transpires on the other side. The seemingly quiet, pastoral vistas do not give away so much as a hint of the fact that right across the border, a brutal and bloody civil war raged for seven years, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, displacing millions and inflicting untold damage on the infrastructure.
In early August, the Syrian army completed its takeover of the area near the Golan border and the region resumed its prewar routine almost immediately. Rebel strongholds in some villages continued fighting for a short period of time, but the majority of the rebels fled the area, protected by the regime's pledge of safe passage.
Others made their way to the northwestern city of Idlib, the only rebel stronghold still standing. Under an agreement between Syria, Russia and Turkey, no fighting is currently taking place in the area, as the parties try to reach an agreement that would satisfy Syrian President Bashar Assad and prevent his forces from staging a massacre.
On the Israeli side, the calm was felt at once. Only three months ago one could hear the not-so-distant echoes of the fighting on the Syrian side of the border and see smoke billowing over the area. Once the Syrians were back in control of the border, the sights of war vanished as well, especially the midnight convoys of wounded Syrians seeking treatment in Israel.
The latter was provided as part of Israel's Operation Good Neighbor, which saw the IDF provide humanitarian relief to the war-torn country.
This aid, which included mostly food, medicine and clothing, sought to truly help the stricken Syrian people, but it was not free of political interest. Hostility toward Israel in the Syrian border-adjacent communities diminished, and some residents even expressed cautious support for the Jewish state, which proved to be anything but the demonic entity their own murderous regime had painted it out to be.
Slowly but surely all areas of the Syrian Golan resumed their prewar routine. United Nations Disengagement Observer Force troops redeployed in the buffer zone between the two countries, Russian Military Police joined Syrian forces patrolling the border to ensure the peace, and on Oct. 15, the strategic Quneitra crossing between Syria and Israel partially reopened after a four-year shutdown.
The crossing currently serves UNDOF forces, but if peace and quiet prevail, it will resume its role as a full-fledged border crossing.
The triple-phase approach
Hezbollah presence on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights remained constant throughout the war. Some of its activities targeted Israel, but mostly, it was there to prop up Assad's regime, sustaining significant losses in the process. As the war waned, the majority of Hezbollah operatives returned to Lebanon.
Israel followed Hezbollah movements in the sector carefully. A security situation assessment held in July said that Hezbollah would try to reassert itself on the Golan under the guise of civilian activities, using the infrastructure and contacts previously established in the area. Some of these infrastructures were targeted in recent years, including in May, when Israel launched a wide-scale raid on Iranian assets, and in July, in another, similar strike.
These strikes sought to make the most of the remaining fog of war with aim of postponing Hezbollah's re-entrenchment in the area.
At that time, Hezbollah was believed to be planning a "triple-phase approach": The first phase was exploiting the close ties it has fostered with the Syrian army during the war to have it turn a blind eye to Hezbollah's efforts to assimilate in the area; the second phase entails introducing tactical capabilities, such as observation points, supplies, explosives, and sniping and anti-tank capabilities, to the area; and the last stage includes importing a show of force – operatives, rockets and missiles – to the area near the border.
This is how Hezbollah operated in Lebanon, executing its plan slowly but surely until it became a force to be reckoned with there.
The military's assessments proved accurate. Hezbollah wasted no time resuming its nefarious activities on Syrian Golan, focusing its efforts in Hader, a Druze border town that Israel went to great lengths to protect during the Syrian civil war. The residents' cooperation with Hezbollah has irked many in Israel, who say the residents are "ungrateful" or at the very least, very interest-driven.
Recently, the IDF has noticed an uptick in the activity in Hader. Hezbollah has set up new observation points there and it is training the locals to conduct surveillance on Israel, which the Shiite terrorist group gets directly, proving the Syrian army's presence in the area is merely a formality.
Hezbollah activity in Hader is nothing new. The group has set up infrastructure there in 2014, headed by Jihad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in January 2015 along with other senior terrorists during a tour of the Syrian Golan in a hit attributed to Israel.
Jihad was the son of Hezbollah archterrorist Imad Mughniyeh, the group's military chief, who was killed in Damascus in February 2008 in an operation also attributed to Israel.
Mughniyeh junior joined Hezbollah's offensive operations in Lebanon following his father's death and was given command of the Golan sector. The 24-year-old emerged as a highly skilled, extremely dangerous commander who, once the Syrian civil war erupted in March 2011, sought to exploit the chaos to launch a series of attacks against Israel, ranging from placing roadside bombs by the border to trying to stage soldiers' abductions.
Israel never admitted it had a hand in his assassination, but Hezbollah was quick to retaliate, firing an anti-tank missile at an IDF patrol near Mount Dov, on the Israel-Lebanon border, and killing two IDF soldiers.
Mughniyeh junior's assassination dealt a serious blow for Hezbollah, but the group refused to relinquish its strategic ploy of establishing terrorist infrastructure in Hader. This time, the mission fell to notorious Lebanese Druze terrorist Samir Kuntar, who was release from Israeli prison in 2008, some 30 years after being convicted of the gruesome murder of three Israelis, including a father and two of his young children.
Infamy aside, Kuntar proved to be a poor excuse for a commander. His ties with Hezbollah did not grant him immunity and he was assassinated in December 2015. Hezbollah again pointed the finger at Israel, but did not retaliate, perhaps over Kuntar's insignificance to the organization.
These hits, and the effort Hezbollah had to invest in other sectors to ensure Assad emerged from the civil war victorious, afforded Israel something of a reprieve from Hezbollah on both the Lebanese and Syrian borders, as since the young Mughniyeh and Kuntar were eliminated, the Shiite terrorist group has not carried out any terrorist attacks in the Golan sector.
But all that, it seems, is about to change. The IDF revealed this week that Hezbollah has renewed its activities in Hader, this time tasking Imad Mughniyeh's eldest son – Mustafa – with heading it.
A man of shadows
Mustafa, the eldest of Mughniyeh's eight children, is a veteran Hezbollah operative but until 2015 he kept to the shadows. Intelligence blog IntelliTimes revealed he was tasked with orchestrating the organization's clandestine operations in Syria, including smuggling weapons, and Israeli intelligence still has him focused on the group's force-building efforts on the line running between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
Mughniyeh's mission in Hader cannot be spotted from the border, certainly not with untrained eyes, as Hezbollah is using the renewed Syrian activity in the area to disguise for its operations.
There is little Assad can do to oppose Hezbollah activities on his soil. The regime is too week from fighting to mount any resistance and it is doubtful the latter is in Assad's interest, as he owes Hezbollah his regime's survival – a debt he can never really repay.
On the ground, this commitment is even stronger. Syrian soldiers and commanders fought side by side with Hezbollah operatives, fostering the kind of camaraderie that can only be created on the battlefield. Hezbollah is now using this solidarity to establish its presence in the area and the Syrian army seems more than willing to look the other way.
Hezbollah's renewed activity in Hader is very troubling to Israel, not only because of the determination the organization is showing in its efforts to re-entrench itself in the Golan Heights – that was expected, as evident by Israel's repeated warnings, especially to Russia – but mostly because Israel senses that as the civil war in Syria draws to an end, the rules of the game on the ground are changing.
Under the auspices of the Syrian civil war, Israel enjoyed considerable leeway in its operations there, as the chaos allowed all interested parties to wage a near-total war in the country, eliminating almost every enemy without paying a price, or at worst, paying a relatively cheap one.
Now Israel has to literally choose its battles and carefully so, especially in the wake of the Sept. 17 downing of a Russian plane by Syrian air defenses trying to counter an Israeli airstrike. The ensuing crisis with Moscow mandates extra prudence in every step Israel takes in Syria.
Over the past few weeks, various foreign media reports alleged that Israel was involved in recent incidents in Syria, but reality indicates effort are now being made to apply international and domestic pressure on Hezbollah.
The most prominent expression of this policy was during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Sept. 28 address before the U.N. General Assembly, during which he revealed that Hezbollah was building precision-missile production sites in the heart of the Lebanese capital.
Hezbollah denied the allegations, but it stands to reason they spurred the group into action, as it was required to either hide its operations, relocate them elsewhere, or suspend them until the controversy blows over.
This will likely also happen now: Hezbollah will try to deny any activity in Hader, and it will certainly deny Mustafa Mughniyeh's involvement, but it will understand that it has been exposed, and may also be wary that a third member of the Mughniyeh family will be made to pay for his actions.
This will leave Hezbollah with three potential courses of action: suspend its operations on the Syrian Golan Heights; abandon Hader and focus on other sectors; or pretend it is business as usual. The Shiite terrorist group is likely to opt for the first two options, at least temporarily, but in the long run, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah will not abandon his strategic plan and will strive to resume it as soon as possible.
This means that the ball will remain in Israel's court, which will require investing resources, especially intelligence, in monitoring developments on the Syrian side of the border, so as to eliminate the element of surprise.
In addition, this situation will require the use of restraining forces in the region, from Russia to the United Nations, in order to try and deter Hezbollah and perhaps its patrons in Damascus and Tehran. If these efforts prove futile, Israel may have no choice but to act, taking risks it has been able to avoid in recent years.
This complex puzzle, which centers on Hezbollah's renewed activities in Hader, is a key part in Israel's decision not to decrease the military's deployment on the Golan border at this time.
The Syrian civil war may be waning, but the relatively quiet frontier remains a war zone. Tensions on the northern border are palpable, despite what may be a deceptive calm. Winter is coming to the area, both figuratively and literally, and all is clouded by a family that has become synonymous with terrorism and the war against Israel – Mughniyeh.
