NIMROD, Golan Heights and TEL AVIV, Israel — The clatter of gunfire pierces the evening calm in Nimrod, an obscure idyll perched among the clouds in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Staff at Biktot Baraffel, a local bed and breakfast, dismiss it as yet another skirmish between the Syrian army and pockets of Sunni rebels in Quneitra, on the opposite side of what has long been called Israel’s "boring border" with Syria. But an escalating campaign by Israel to contain Iran and its Hezbollah allies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq is busting the complacency that has long enveloped the area, with growing worries that conflict between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors may erupt anew.
Soyossi Koroi is a corporal from the Fijian battalion serving with the UN Disengagement Observer Force. The force monitors the 80-kilometer (49-mile) cease-fire line in the Golan Heights that has been in place since the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He confirmed that things were heating up. “Hezbollah is active on the bravo side,” Koroi said, using the term for the Syrian side of the buffer zone.
