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On Tuesday, Israel shot down a Syrian warplane over Golan Heights airspace, the first such incident in over three decades, and warned that it will respond “forcefully” in case of any security threat. The last time Israel had shot down a Syrian warplane was in 1985, drawing a sharp response from the then Syrian government. Israel has said that the fighter jet had crossed the UN-patrolled border line on Golan Heights, which it considers as the international border.
Smoke was seen rising from Syrian village Jubata al-Khashab, a bombing target of the warplane just before it was shot down by an Israeli Patriot surface-to-air missile. The wreckage, lying on the Syrian side of the border, was also caught on camera.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that the Israeli army had shot down “a Syrian fighter plane which approached Israel’s sovereign territory on the Golan in a threatening manner, and even crossed the frontier”.
Israel has captured 1,200 square kilometers of the Golan plateau from Syria in 1967 during the six-day war, and annexed it in 1981 – the move was never accepted by the international community.
Israeli public radio quoted a senior military official saying that Russian-made Sukhoi Su-24 had gotten 400 meters into Israeli air space before it was brought down.
The plane was brought down only three weeks after Israel had shot down a drone in Golan airspace as heavy fighting raged near the Syrian-side of the plateau – most of the territory has been captured by Syrian rebels to overthrow the regime. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have been targeting the region with frequent air strikes in an attempt to regain control from the rebels, with some of the strikes being close to Israeli positions.
The Syrian regime has said that the shots fired suggest Israel’s support to the rebels; it also described the act as a “flagrant violation” of a UN Security Council resolution that had been passed earlier in the year.
Yaalon has warned that Israel will not tolerate threats to its security and respond “forcefully”.
“We will not allow anyone, whether it is a state actor or a terror organization, to threaten our security and breach our sovereignty. We will respond forcefully against any such attempt, whether it is an error or intentional”, he said.