Israel’s military has seized a strategic mountain top in its contested border area with Syria and advanced on positions beyond it, reshaping the frontier potentially for the long term.

Qaeda spin-off HTS will come in two flavours only. Either submit and collude like the West Bank, or end up wrecked like Gaza There has been a flurry of “What next for Syria?” articles in the wake of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s hurried exit from Syria and the takeover of much of the country by al-Qaeda’s rebranded local forces.

Israel’s PM claimed credit Sunday for the events leading to the downfall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad — and used the moment to boost the Jewish state’s security by bombing terror sites in

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Tice's mother his country won't conduct airstrikes near a secret prison outside Damascus.

The buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights was created by the U.N. after the 1973 Mideast war. A

Assad’s fall to bomb all the Syrian military assets it wanted to keep out of the rebels’ hands – striking nearly 500 targets, destroying the navy, and taking out, it claims, 90% of Syria’s known surface-to-air missiles.

A Syrian security source said Israeli troops reached Qatana, which is six miles into Syrian territory east of a demilitarised zone separating Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria.

Israel has seized land along its border with Syria and carried out air strikes on Damascus. Benjamin Netanyahu said IDF troops had captured a buffer zone in the Golan Heights on the same day a lightning rebel offensive toppled the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

Israel is celebrating the fall of Assad because it breaks the noose that Iran had been patiently tightening around Israel’s borders in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Tehran’s pincer is now broken and rendered useless. From the point of view of Israel’s wider conflict with the Islamic Republic, the collapse of Assad’s regime is a strategic victory.

The Israeli military hit weapons depots and air defenses, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel has said it aims to keep military equipment away from extremists.

Israeli troops will remain in Syria slightly beyond a buffer zone -- created by the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement -- for "strategic reasons," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement Thursday.

Even as Israeli jets bombed weapons sites, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered "a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria."