IDF Targets Jihadists, Syrian Post after Rocket Fire

JERUSALEM, Israel -- On Friday morning, the IAF targeted the Islamic Jihad terror cell that fired four rockets on northern Israel Thursday afternoon, confirming four fatalities. The four were traveling in a vehicle less than 10 miles from the Israeli-Syrian border.

Within hours after Thursday's rocket attacks, the IDF hit 14 Syrian military posts with artillery and airstrikes. Syria reported one fatality.

Two of the projectiles landed in the Golan Heights and two in the Upper Galilee, one sparking a brushfire near a town.

The IDF determined that Thursday's rocket fire was not random spillover from Syria's civil war, but rather calculated aggression. Israeli authorities said Islamic Jihad, an Iranian terror proxy like Hamas and Hezbollah, fired the rockets on northern Israel.

"Iran sponsored these attacks. These were clear and intentional acts of aggression, directly violating Israeli sovereignty," the IDF Spokesman's Office said in statement. "The IDF holds the Syrian government responsible for all attacks emanating from Syrian territory and will continue to protect and safeguard the State of Israel."

Islamic Jihad denied responsibility for the rocket fire. An Israeli military source quoted by YNet said the IDF's "severe" response to the aggression was meant to "send a message and underscore the severity of the incident."

"The Iranians want to heat up the front against us in the northern and southern Golan," the source said. "It's in the Syrian and Iranian interest."

A day earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon warned that Israel would respond decisively to any aggression on the northern border.

"We are prepared for every scenario," Netanyahu said. "Anyone who tries to hurt us, we will hurt them."

Ya'alon said the Iranian nuclear deal would fund terror groups in Syria, Lebanon and in "the Palestinian arena."

"Representatives of the Revolutionary Guards are, in fact, waiting for the implementation of this bad [Iranian] deal with world powers to bring more money to Hezbollah, more to other terror groups both in the [Syrian side of the] Golan Heights and the Palestinian arena," the defense minister said.

Earlier on Thursday, the IDF deployed Iron Dome anti-missile batteries to Ashdod and Beersheva in anticipation of retaliatory rocket fire should Mohammed Allan, an Islamic Jihad operative hospitalized in critical condition after a two-month hunger strike, die.

When Israel's High Court ruled to end his detention because of his medical condition, Allan agreed to break the fast and allow Israeli doctors to nurse him back to health. There were rumors he suffered brain damage, possibly irreversible, from the hunger strike.

But reports from Barzilai Medical staff said his situation improved remarkably once he broke the fast.