MOSCOW. Dec 5 (Interfax) - Israel will have to fight against Shia militias, should they be deployed to the Golan Heights with the consent of Bashar al-Assad's regime, Avi Dichter, head of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Israeli parliament (Knesset), said.
"If Bashar al-Assad agrees to turn a blind eye on the presence of Shia militias, the question will arise where to deploy them. This is Syria's problem. But if they are deployed in the Golan heights, this would become our problem because we have no intention of opening a second front. We won't accept it, and if Shia militias start acting against Israel, we will have to fight them, and this will become a problem for Syria," Dichter said in an interview with Interfax.
He was leading a Knesset delegation which visited Moscow last week.
"Most of all we are concerned with how to prevent an escalation on the Israeli-Syrian border. Because an escalation there will turn into a disaster in every sense," he said.
"Israel has stated that it will not let anyone turn the Golan heights into a platform for carrying out terror attacks against our country and civilians, and this also holds true for deploying modern weapons and building infrastructure near the Golan heights," Dichter said.
"It is largely thanks to Russia that the regime of Bashar al-Assad controls practically the entire territory of the state. He is the leader of this country and unlikely to agree to host two armies, both Syria's and Iran's. It does not matter that these are so-called Shia militias: effectively, it is an Iranian army in its pure form, just another force, so there is no difference between Shia formations in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon," Dichter said.
"This is exactly why we are saying that, as long as Syria is a sovereign state, the responsibility for everything that goes on lies on Bashar al-Assad's shoulders," he said.