IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz warned on Thursday that despite the IDF and the Shin Bet’s ability to foil this week’s terror attack near the border with Egypt, there are no guarantees that Israel would have similar intelligence that will allow it to thwart similar attacks in the future.

Speaking during a ceremony marking Reservists Appreciation Day, Gantz said that the current turmoil in the region is forcing the IDF to prepare for a multi-front attack.

“The recent attempts to hurt Israelis were foiled thanks to the high efficiency of our forces and thanks to precise intelligence,” he said, adding, “We will not always have the early warning so we must be prepared for any scenario.”

He noted that Israel and the IDF are closely monitoring the changes taking place in Syria and Egypt, adding that Israel must be prepared for the possibility of conflict in the region.

“Recent events require the IDF to prepare for every scenario – even a multi-front confrontation,” he stressed.

Gantz’s comments came as the Israeli Cabinet voted to approve an Egyptian request to send in helicopters to the Sinai Peninsula.

The approval was given for a period of several days and allows five aircraft to enter the region. The move is designed to assist Egypt in its military operation against terrorist elements in the Sinai.

Gantz also took the opportunity to praise the resilience of the reserve soldiers and their willingness to serve.

“This event in which we say thank you to the reservists is no less important than any operational exercise,” Gantz said, adding that service in the reserves is “a primary expression of social commitment and personal responsibility to the State.”

Statistics published on Wednesday, a day before Reservists Appreciation Day, showed that Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria (Yehuda and Shomron) are the most active reservists in Israel.

The statistics found that while only five percent of the soldiers who are eligible for reserve duty actually perform reserve duty, the area from which most reservists come is Judea and Samaria, where 34 percent of those serving in the reserves live.

Hezbollah could attack Europe at any time and with little to no warning, US State Department’s counter-terrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin said Friday according to AFP, shortly after the US Treasury announced a fresh round of economic sanctions against the Lebanon-based terrorist group.

“Our assessment is that Hezbollah and Iran will both continue to maintain a heightened level of terrorist activity and operations in the near future,” Benjamin said at a conference call with reporters. “Hezbollah maintains a presence in Europe and its recent activities demonstrate that it is not constrained by concerns about collateral damage or political fallout that could result from conducting operations there… We assess that Hezbollah could attack in Europe or elsewhere at any time with little or no warning.”

The US Treasury stated that its new sanctions on Hezbollah were imposed due to the group’s continued support of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The move will freeze any assets Hezbollah may have under US jurisdiction and prohibit Americans and US companies from dealing with the Lebanon-based group.

The United States has already blocked Syria’s central bank and top Syrian government officials from US markets. On Friday, the administration also imposed sanctions on Syria’s state-run oil company Sytrol for having provided gasoline to Iran.

Benjamin warned that Hezbollah could become increasingly violent as international sanctions threaten Syria and Iran, its patron-states.  “Hezbollah believes there have been sustained Israeli and western campaigns against the group and its primary backers Iran and Syria over the past several years and this perception is unlikely to change. Both remain determined to exact revenge against Israel and to respond forcefully to the Western-led pressure against Iran and Syria,” he said.

Though dispelling fears that Hezbollah could be active in the United States, Benjamin said that the group has “stepped up terrorist campaign around the world.”

“It’s a very ambitious group with global reach,” he said.

Turkish forces have launched a major offensive in recent days against positions held by the PKK rebel movement in the area of the Turkish-Iraqi border. Up to 2,000 troops are taking part in the operation, according to Turkish media sources.

Turkey’s Interior Minister, Idris Naim Sahin, claimed that 115 Kurdish rebels had been killed by the Turkish security forces – an assertion dismissed by the PKK, which itself claims to have killed up to 49 Turkish soldiers.

The fighting has been going on since July 24, when the Turkish army responded in force to a PKK attempt to seize control of the road between the towns of Semdinli and Gerdiya. The authorities have closed off the area, making it difficult to attain an accurate picture of events on the ground.

A PKK media statement described the Semdinli area as an “area of war,” involving “thousands of enemy soldiers and hundreds of guerrillas,” in which Turkey is using “tanks, warplanes, helicopters and other military technology.”

Semdinli’s mayor, Sedat Tore, who is affiliated with the Kurdish BDP party, told The Economist magazine that Semdinli’s residents are currently surrounded by a “circle of fire.”

From the point of view of the government in Ankara, however, the circle of fire is a Kurdish one, directed against Turkey and currently increasing in its dimensions.

The Turkish move comes at a time when Ankara is deeply concerned at the notable improvement in the strategic position of the Kurds as a result of a series of regional developments. Currently unable to influence events in Syria and Iraq, Ankara appears to be trying to draw a line in the sand at its own border. Turkey is seeking to scotch any attempt to foment unrest among Kurds in Turkey who might feel emboldened as a result of the improving Kurdish position in Syria and Iraq.

Turkey’s concerns, from its point of view, are easy to grasp. Contrary to endless media reports that the situation in Syria has entered its “endgame,” the civil war now under way in that country shows no signs of nearing conclusion. Rather, the various sides are entrenching themselves in their sectarian strongholds and preparing for a long and drawn-out struggle.

Central government in Syria no longer exists in a meaningful sense. The Kurds of Syria’s northeast have taken advantage of the regime’s desire to entrench and consolidate its forces. The Syrian Kurds are natural opponents of the Arab nationalist Assad regime.

But there is also deep suspicion of the Turkish-backed, Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian National Council.

There is a strong desire in the Kurdish northeast of Syria to stay out of the fight. Kurdish paramilitaries in that area have sought to prevent the rebels of the Free Syrian Army from activity that could bring down regime retribution.

The regime is now seeking to concentrate its forces in the most volatile and vulnerable areas and is pouring troops into the battle for Aleppo. To free up personnel from its limited pool, it has carried out a withdrawal from the main parts of Kurdish-dominated Hasakah governate.

This area is now under the de facto control of a coalition of Kurdish forces. These forces, in turn, are dominated by the PYD (Democratic Union Party).

This is the franchise of the PKK among the Syrian Kurds. The area now controlled by the coalition led by the PYD includes a long swathe of the 900-kilometer border between Turkey and Syria. This raises the possibility of a new front, directed by the PKK and its allies, from an area of Kurdish autonomy.

The PKK currently maintains its main stronghold in the Qandil mountains between Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and southern Turkey. Ankara is now dealing with the possibility of this situation being duplicated on another of its borders.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan has made clear that Turkey sees intervention against rebel bases in northern Syria as its “most natural right.”

Turkish forces and missile batteries were moved to positions adjacent to the Kurdish enclave in Syria in recent days.

Ankara maintains good relations with the Kurdish Regional Government of Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq. But Turkey was further concerned by Barzani’s brokering in his capital, Erbil, of the agreement between the PYD and the non-PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish factions of the KNC (Kurdish National Council), which has made possible joint Kurdish control of the areas abandoned by Assad.

Turkey’s political strategy appears to involve deepening relations with Barzani and the KRG, while seeking to marginalize the PYD.

The PYD, for its part, has sought to stress that Turkish concerns regarding the Syrian Kurds are groundless and that its focus is on ensuring the security of its own community, rather than seeking a base for military action against Turkey.

From a limited, military perspective, this is probably true. The land between northeast Syria and Turkey is less suited for guerrilla actions than is the Qandil mountain area. And Turkey’s track record suggests that it would not hesitate to respond in force to any such actions.

But from a longer-term strategic perspective, Turkey does indeed have grounds for concern. A series of events in the Arab world over the last decade have for the first time put the borders in place since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 seriously into question. The Kurds, who were the central losers from those borders, are the main beneficiaries of this.

The US invasion of Iraq allowed a semi-sovereign Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq to come into existence.

This enclave, while seeking normal relations with Turkey, also permits the use of its territory by rebels engaged in an insurgency on behalf of Turkey’s large Kurdish population.

As a result of the outbreak of civil war in Syria, another Kurdish enclave has emerged in Syria. This enclave is dominated by the sister party to the PKK. But the Iraqi Kurds also exert influence there.

As Arab borders and the integrity of Arab states look more shaky than they have at any time in living memory, Turkey faces the possibility of sharing long-term borders with two semi-sovereign Kurdish entities.

The specter of eventual Kurdish sovereignty and Turkish fear of this are also discernible in the air.

From this point of view, it becomes easy to understand why a move by the PKK in the Semdinli area received such a furious response from the Turkish state army. Ankara is utterly determined to prevent the extension of any Kurdish Spring to its own 25-percent Kurdish minority, and will evidently employ whatever measures and means it deems necessary to ensure this.

Israeli sources say there is evidence Egypt’s north Sinai region is becoming not only a rallying point for jihadist gunmen but a firing range for Gaza’s indefatigable rocket builders, seeking ever greater range and accuracy for its weapons.

It was soon after the 2011 revolt in Egypt toppled President Hosni Mubarak that Israeli rocket radars began to spot unusual launches from the Palestinian territory, which Israel keeps under a land, sea and air cordon.

Normally they streaked towards Israeli border towns, or north towards coastal cities. But now some were aimed at the empty desert wastes of Sinai.

The purpose seemed clear: to test rockets made or smuggled in by Palestinian groups who do not have space for a practice range.

“They have a Beduin collaborator in Sinai who finds the crater and marks it by GPS,” an Israeli official told Reuters on condition of anonymity, describing a low-tech but effective method of tracking test-firings from Gaza.

A sheik from a Sinai village around 60 km (40 miles) from Gaza described how in June he heard several explosions and went to investigate. He found a spent rocket. It had gouged a basketball-size hole in the ground.

“The remaining parts did not include any writings that could tell where the rocket came from,” he said.

Google Range-finder

Gaza’s Hamas government and its smaller Islamist factions deny conducting any military operations in Sinai.

But security officials from Egypt, which is now hunting armed Islamists in Sinai in its biggest military operation there in 40 years, privately admit it has become a playground of bandits, smugglers and jihadis exploiting the free-for-all.

The Israelis who spoke about the rocket tests did so before an Aug. 5 attack on a Sinai police post shocked Cairo, raising the stakes overnight in what Israel said it hoped would be “a wake-up call”.

Gunmen killed 16 policemen. Seven militants were then killed by Israeli forces after they stormed the border in a stolen armored car, some wearing explosive belts.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Hamas said it was arresting radical Salafi Islamists, one of several groups who try to fire rockets into Israel in defiance of de facto Palestinian truces.

Israeli officials will not comment on the record about the Gaza rocket tests, perhaps unwilling to pile another public headache onto Egypt’s new, Islamist-rooted government.

When rudimentary rockets emerged in Gaza a decade ago, they were test-fired into the Mediterranean. Splash-downs were calibrated using binoculars and spotters in fishing boats. Since those days, Gaza rocketeers have at times test-launched into Israel’s southern Negev desert.

Thanks to advances in Gaza’s underground munitions industry and smuggling of military grade rockets from Sinai, ranges have increased and crews need observable impact sites during tests.

Tzvika Foghel, an Israeli brigadier-general in the reserves often garrisoned in the south, recalled occasions when rockets were fired from the far western corner of Gaza at open areas of Israel, a diagonal span of more than 40 km (25 miles).

“They could easily see where the rockets were landing by putting someone in an elevated position in Beit Hanoun,” Foghel said, referring to a Gaza town on the Israeli border.

Palestinian sources say rocketeers would monitor Israeli media and police channels after a launch and use the web-based mapping program Google Earth to assess range and accuracy.

Tell-Tale Debris

Israel’s Gaza cordon includes advanced radars to detect and track rocket launches in real-time. The radars feed Iron Dome, an interceptor system that only shoots downs rockets threatening populated areas.

Rockets headed into the open Negev, deliberately or by mistake, are watched with interest by Israeli intelligence.

“There are those who see these practice launches as an opportunity to study what the enemy is planning and preparing for us,” said a serving IDF officer.

So when Palestinians fire a rocket in practice, the Israelis can study its trajectory and debris. But in Sinai the debris is beyond their reach.

Rockets and mortars have killed 21 people in Israel’s south over the past decade. When fired in salvoes, life is suspended for around one million Israelis who live within range, running for shelter to await the blast and the all-clear.

In the southern town of Sderot, a frequent target, the crisis center has a room full of twisted, rusting rocket casings that trace the steady development of this Palestinian arsenal.

During the three-week Gaza war, the erratic course of some rockets was plain to see, as they cork-screwed wildly up into the blue sky, trailing a coil of thick white smoke. Last year, one exploded right next to a kibbutz kindergarten, luckily after the children had filed inside.

“There are those (in the military) who think a distinction should be made between launches meant to kill and maim and those that, perhaps, are not,” Foghel said. “I’m not one of them.”

According to an Israeli defense official, the Gaza arsenal currently amounts to 10,000 rockets, the more powerful of which reach 70 km (44 miles), enough to hit Tel Aviv.

It is closely watched, and in the fog of war testing can prove just as dangerous for Palestinian militants as war itself.

In late October, an overflying Israeli surveillance drone recorded several Palestinians painstakingly off-loading a long, heavy tube-like object from a van and then standing it on what looked like a launch-pad in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The ensuing air strike on the site killed a senior member of the Palestinian faction Islamic Jihad and four of his comrades.

It may have been the group’s bad luck that their appearance coincided with a flare-up of violence that included a rocket being fired deep enough into Israel to set off sirens on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, more than 50 km (32 miles) from Gaza.

“In retrospect, we got information indicating that it was meant to be another test-launch,” the Israeli military officer said of the men killed in Rafah.

A rocketeer from one Palestinian faction in the enclave told Reuters such risks are part of the long conflict with Israel that requires either fighting or preparing to fight.

“Every outing with rockets is a life-and-death adventure. It is one we love,” he said. “If we live we will be back to fire more, and if we die we go to heaven as martyrs.”

On July 30, the Turkish Armed Forces began sending armored units and missile batteries to the Syrian border, reinforcing defenses against the ongoing violence taking place there. Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) violent activity against Turkey has reached a point where the terrorist organization continues attacks in one of Turkey’s southeastern districts, continually over the course of about a week.

Furthermore the PKK has managed to create de facto political control over some Kurdish-populated provinces of Syria by even raising its so-called “flag.”

Ankara indicated that it will not refrain from taking action should the Kurds stage attacks against Turkey from there.

On August 1, the Turkish Foreign Minister visited Masud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq, to ask for help to limit the PKK’s presence in Syria, and the Syrian Kurds’ autonomy demands. However, it might be impossible to put the genie back into the bottle.

Under Turkish Foreign Minister Prof. Davutoglu’s Stratejik Derinlik (strategic depth) paradigm in Turkish foreign policy, Syria appeared as a source of great expectations and ambitious ideals. First, Ankara tried to restore its imperial influence in its neighbor through neo-Ottomanist integration policies.

Then, as the Arab Spring threatened Bahrain’s Sunni Monarchy and the Allawite dominated Baathist regime of Damascus, this conjuncture triggered sectarian fault lines in the Middle East, and forced Turkey to take a Sunni-centric position.

This time, Davutoglu’s strategic vision shifted to take advantage of the Gulf States’ threat perceptions resulting from Iran’s rising political-military influence in the region and the emergence of a sort of the Shiite crescent, stretching from Tehran to Lebanon via Syria. Thereby, Turkey aimed to topple Tehran’s closest ally which would turn Syria into the backyard of Ankara and declare the Turkish government as the undisputed source of leadership of the Sunni block.

However, the rise of the Kurds, especially the PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD), the third round of the Syrian dilemma is now about to become a nightmare for Turkey’s national security. The rise of the PKK threat and the spillover of Kurdish separatism is a sophisticated, complex factor. The Kurdish terrorist organization has succeeded in surviving and adaptng to completely different status quos in the Middle East. It prevailed, despite dramatic shifts such as the end of the Cold War, the first and the second Gulf Wars, and the post 9/11 period.

It is not a monolithic entity, and there are many wings which are under the influence and control of several actors.

The PKK militants are of Syrian-Kurdish origin, and there is a strong Syrian influence in the armed wing of PKK, known as the HPG.

Like Syria, Iran also has leverages in PKK through its Qud’s Force. For decades the cunning leadership of the separatist organization has managed to operate against Turkey, an important NATO power, and got along when negotiating with dangerous regimes such as Saddam’s and Assad’s tyrannies. Now, through dominating the Turkish border areas of north Syria, PKK is setting a trap for Turkey.

Since Ankara has boosted its support to the Syrian opposition, there has been a meaningful uptick in PKK activity.

Furthermore, at the outset of the uprising the PKK helped Assad in suppressing Kurdish opposition and controlling the north of the country. In return, Assad broke the 1998 Adana Agreement between Ankara and Damascus, which states that “Syria will not allow the supply of weapons, logistical material and financial support to and the propaganda activities of the PKK on its territory,” and supported the terrorist organization as a leverage and deterrence factor against the Turkish leadership.

In June, Turkish strategists woke up from the dream of neo-imperial hegemony when they saw PKK flags and posters of Abdullah Ocalan (its currently imprisoned terrorist leader), raised over the Kurdish-populated border towns of Syria.

Furthermore, last month, the PKKaffiliated PYD pragmatically came to an agreement with pro-Barzani elements of the Syrian-Kurdish opposition and took control of some towns near the Turkish border. Considering the tense situation, KRG is sober for avoiding Turkey’s outrage, but on the other hand, when it comes to protecting the Syrian Kurdish fait accompli, it seemed quite determined to risk an armed clash with Iraqi Security Forces when Baghdad tried to seize control of the Iraqi border with Syria’s Kurdish-dominated provinces last week.

Meanwhile, PKK violence has shown an unusual increase for about a week in Turkey’s southeastern provinces. Particularly in Shemdinli, the terrorist organization seems to have adopted a different concept which seeks to claim control over border districts instead of waging classic hit-and-run tactics against the Turkish Military’s outposts.

By embracing such a course of action, it is argued, the Kurdish organization intends to integrate its efforts with the Kurdish takeover in Syria’s northern provinces as well as the consolidation of KRG’s power vis-a-vis Baghdad. Thus, it aims to dictate a “Kurdish Spring” to Turkey in parallel with Arab uprisings in the region.

The trajectory of events in Syria point to two probable outcomes in a near future. First, the Baathist dictatorship will not be able to survive for long; and second, Syria’s unity will be largely questionable after Assad’s demise.

If the PKK successfully takes advantage of the power vacuum upon the collapse of the Baathist regime, it may gain a significant upper hand in its separatist campaign. First, the terrorist organization might create another Northern Iraq style zone, and this is an indispensable geo-strategic parameter in the lowintensity conflicts’ theory and practice.

Second, political control over Syrian Kurdish provinces via PYD might provide legitimacy to the terrorists to some extent, which they would enjoy in relation to Turkey if Ankara and PKK resume negotiations again.

Finally – and most importantly – Kurdish autonomy with a border with Iraqi Kurdistan would inevitably create momentum and may trigger a spillover effect towards Turkey.

In a possible Lebanonization of Syria, Davutoglu’s foreign-policy paradigm would face a harder mission than restoring the empire, but keeping Turkey’s national unity.

The writer, who served as a post-doctoral fellow for the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, holds a Ph from the Turkish War College, and a master’s degree from the Turkish Military Academy.