Israel recognizes Assad's staying power

Over the next few weeks, a historic event, which will go unreported and not elicit much public reaction, will take place in Israel. The command of the 36th Ga’ash Division of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will disband and relocate from the Golan Heights to a new home-front base. Established in 1954 — six years after Israel’s foundation — it is one of the IDF’s first armored divisions, and has been deployed on the Golan Heights since 1971. This is an elite, highly trained regular division that for the last 43 years has been tasked with overseeing only one sector — the Syrian one. Living and breathing the Golan Heights, this division trains there and knows the area inside out. All the division’s combat arrays, doctrines and training were based on war with Syria. The Syrian enemy, to wit, the Assad dynasty, has been the 36th Division’s raison d’être. In Israel, when you call it by its name, you're in fact saying the Golan Heights, you’re in fact saying Syria. They’re synonymous.

Yet lo and behold, not before long this historic IDF division will relocate to a home-front base and its troops will move to the rear. It will be replaced by a regional brigade whose mission is to engage in what is known as low-intensity security operations. Not trained to engage in heavy battles between regular armies, it will be similar to the units guarding Israel’s border with Jordan and much of its border with Egypt. These are troops who are trained to carry out border patrols, identify incursions, deal with low-intensity security issues and react forcefully if attacked. It’s a whole different ball game.

Three years after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the penny has finally dropped in Israel — slowly, albeit not necessarily painfully. The strategic situation has radically changed. Syria no longer poses an existential threat to the Zionist state. There are no more trained and equipped Syrian armored divisions deployed just two or three hours away from the border. That Syria is long gone. Realizing that, Israel adapts.

While the number of tanks in the IDF has dramatically plummeted in the past decade, the quality of each tank has risen significantly. The number of artillery batteries has diminished, too. What we see in their stead are a growing number of light and trained units, chiefly dedicated anti-terrorist infantry brigades, which are heliborne or use fast vehicles for greater maneuverability. Operating under low signature, they’re trained to be agile and deadly. Welcome to the new Middle East. There remain few Arab countries that still scheme to destroy the State of Israel. However, there are an abundance of state-like terrorist organizations with trained jihadists — armed with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles and using tunnels and bunkers — ready to kill Israelis and to be killed. This week, on Jan. 20, one of them fired rockets from the Sinai Peninsula at the southern city of Eilat.