Reuters: Israel described the Syrian civil war as effectively over on Thursday and predicted that the Golan Heights frontier between the countries would be quieter with central rule by Damascus restored there. President Bashar al-Assad’s sweeping away of rebels in southwestern Syria has worried Israel, which last week downed a Syrian warplane that it said breached a Golan buffer zone and warned Iranian forces backing him against deploying there.
But Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman sounded more upbeat on Thursday during a tour of anti-aircraft batteries.
“From our perspective, the situation is returning to how it was before the civil war, meaning there is a real address, someone responsible, and central rule,” he told reporters, referring to a decades-old standoff between Israel and Syria.