On Aug. 27, a Syrian warplane attacked insurgent positions in the area of Quneitra and then returned safely to its base somewhere in Syria. On an ordinary day, there is no way a plane appearing over Quneitra, literally along the Israeli-Syrian disengagement line, would have returned home safely. The Israeli Air Force (IAF), with its interception systems, is constantly on alert. Identifying a foreign jet grazing the country’s northern border would normally lead to an immediate interception. That, however, was not the case in this instance. It is believed that Israel weighed the situation and decided to turn a blind eye, allowing the Syrian plane to carry out its mission without shooting it down. This episode might be a telltale sign of the Israeli government's tendency these days to prefer Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the insurgents fighting him.

A few days later, on Aug. 31, an unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) was intercepted at the exact same place. An IAF Patriot battery deployed in the Upper Galilee fired a missile, easily downing it. The craft was initially reported to be a Syrian drone. Then reports emerged that it was probably an Iranian UAV used by the Syrian military. Did Israel regret having shot it down? Did Israel exercise added discretion, deciding that an Iranian drone on its border meant crossing a “red line”? Was it indeed an Iranian UAV? If so, could Israel have known about it in real time?

When such incidents unfold, the military and the political decision-makers have only a few seconds to call the shots. The Golan Heights is a tiny area. Indeed, Israel is so small that a fighter aircraft can cross it in just a few minutes. On Aug. 27, Israel turned a blind eye. On Aug. 31, however, an interception took place. These different responses perfectly symbolize the internal debate in Israel, the difficulty of decision-making, as well as Israeli (and global) embarrassment regarding the highly complex situation in Syria. How can Israel know which side it should prefer? Should it choose the murderous Assad — an ally of Iran and Hezbollah but also a man of his word under whose regime the Golan Heights remained quiet for 40 years — or a mixed bag of gangs, some of which are secular and pragmatic but most of which are jihadist and completely off their rockers?

Given the broader picture, Israel has long decided to straddle the line when it comes to the civil war in Syria. Just as during the Iran-Iraq War, Prime Minister Menachem Begin wished “success to both sides,” the chaos in Syria, strategically speaking, is not a negative thing from Israel’s standpoint. Once considered one of the key threats to Israel’s national security, the Syrian military currently no longer poses such a threat. The northern front, which used to present an existential threat, has become defunct. From an Israeli perspective, the ongoing exchange of blows in Syria, which keeps it bleeding and torn between different forces, is not necessarily a bad thing.