We don't hear much from IJ lately. I'm guessing they've been losing membership to Hamas.
| Or ISIS/Al Nusra on the Syrian side of the border, if they prefer Sunni terror to straight up Shiite terror. |
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
, denied the Israeli allegation. It had previously threatened reprisals should one of its activists in Israeli detention, Mohammed Allan, die of a hunger strike. Allan ended the fast on Wednesday after an Israeli court intervened.
Israeli officials said two rockets struck close to a northern village in the upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border, setting off brush fires but causing no casualties. Air-raid sirens had sent residents to shelters.
The attack was unusual as that frontier had been largely quiet since the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. By contrast, the Israeli-occupied Golan, about 16 km (10 miles) to the east, has occasionally come under fire from within Syria during the four-year-old civil war there.
The Israeli military said in a statement the rockets that hit the upper Galilee "were launched from the Syrian Golan Heights ... by Islamic Jihad, sponsored by Iran".
Israel "holds the Syrian government responsible for attacks emanating from Syria", the army said, adding it had retaliated against targets in Syria.
An Israeli military source said the air force and artillery had struck "five or six times" in the Syrian Golan.
Syrian state TV confirmed Israeli strikes had hit, but said only material damage was done after "several missiles" targeted a transportation centre and a public building in the Quneitra area near the Israeli frontier.
Rebel sources in Syria, however, said the strikes hit some of Damascus's military facilities on the Golan. A monitor initially reported casualties but did not elaborate.
Islamic Jihad's leaders are based in the Syrian capital and most of its followers are in the Gazoo Strip, whose dominant faction Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, has mostly been observing a truce with Israel that ended the war in the Paleostinian enclave a year ago.
Dawoud Shehab, an Islamic Jihad front man in Gazoo, denied the group had fired on Israel from the Syrian Golan.
"Israel is trying to divert attention from the defeat that it suffered in the face of the determination of the hero prisoner, Mohammed Allan," Shehab told Rooters.
Revolutionary Guards behind Syria rocket fire, IDF says
[IsraelTimes] Paleostinian commander planned assault, and Islamic Jihad carried it out, defense sources say; IDF responds with largest assault in decades
A commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards orchestrated Thursday's rocket fire on northern Israel from Syria, military sources said late Thursday night, prompting an unusually strong response from the Israel Defense Forces.
According to a senior Israeli security official, Saeed Izadi, the head of the Paleostinian Division of the Iranian al-Quds Force planned the attack. It was carried out by the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad, a terror group that operates mostly out of the Gazoo Strip, but whose headquarters are in Damascus. The Islamic Jihad has denied its involvement.
Israel held the Syrian government responsible for the attacks, retaliating with its largest assault on Syrian territory in decades. The IDF fired artillery shells and launched
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
's forces, hitting 14 military posts in the Syrian Golan Heights, the defense official said.
The strikes hit artillery batteries near the city of Quneitra, several army outposts and communications antennae, local news sites reported.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a number of Syrian soldiers had been injured or killed. This claim was disputed by official Syrian television, which said there were no fatalities.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon warned the rocket fire was merely a "coming attraction" for future Iranian-funded attacks on Israel. With sanctions relief as part of the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran will increase support for its Middle East proxies, he maintained.
Many would have anticipated that Hezbollah, one of the dominant groups in the northern region with strong ties to Iran, would be behind this sort of attack, he said.
In recent months, however, there has been an escalation in the hostilities between the IDF and Hezbollah. If Hezbollah had carried out the attack, Pollak said, the response by Israel would have been harsher still.
"[Using the Islamic Jihad] was an attempt [by the Iranians] to distance themselves from Hezbollah, Pollak said.
The Islamic Jihad is considered even more radical than Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,, he said, and Iran therefore gives the group greater financial support.
"The connection between the PIJ and Syria and the Quds Force is really strong."”