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. 

This week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that it had identified a number of rockets targeting Israel from Syria. The Grad rockets launched from the Aqraba area southeast of Damascus landed 2 kilometers, or about 1.2 miles, short of the Israeli border on the Syrian side. The IDF blamed Iran’s Quds Force for the attack, which came shortly after a series of airstrikes attributed to Israel struck an alleged Iranian base near the town of Abu Kamal on Syria’s border with Iraq. Israel did not comment on the strikes, which are said to have killed 18 triggered the first exchange of cross-border fire between the foes since the 2006 Lebanon war, raising alarm bells across the region.

“Each military action increases the likelihood of an all-out war, which neither side currently wants,” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow focusing on the Levant at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Increasing Israeli attacks may lead Iran to believe that Israel is interested in war, and they may seek to preempt it. A Hezbollah retaliatory strike may lead to mass casualties, resulting in pressure on the Israeli government to respond more forcefully, further pushing both sides down the path of war.”