Arab citizen uses paraglider to join Syrian war, says Israel

Israel said on Sunday that an Arab citizen had used a paraglider to fly illegally into neighbouring Syria, where he planned to join Islamic State insurgents in the four-year-old rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad.

The man's flight on Saturday across the fortified Golan Heights frontier unnerved Israel, which has seen dozens of its minority Muslim Arabs or Palestinians from East Jerusalem reach the Syrian civil war through legal destinations such as Turkey.

The Israeli military, whose aircraft dropped illumination flares around the Golan overnight before calling off the searches on Sunday, issued brief statements describing the paraglider as an Arab from the predominantly Muslim town of Jaljulia. He was not named. Israeli media gave his age as 23.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the man’s citizenship would be revoked as part of a wider policy against militants.

A minister from Mr Netanyahu's rightist Likud party, Ofir Akunis, told reporters that the Israeli Arab had "crossed to the border into Syria . . . to join ISIS [Islamic State] forces".

A Syrian rebel whose group operates in the area said the paraglider had come down either in Quneitra province or western Deraa. Local rebel groups include the Southern Front alliance affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, and a group called the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, which other rebels believe is affiliated with Islamic State.

Israel is publicly neutral on the Syrian civil war, worried that Mr Assad, a long-time foe with whom it had maintained a stable standoff, could be toppled by more openly hostile Islamists. It has outlawed travel there by Israelis on security grounds, and has cracked down on those suspected of trying to breach the ban.

Reuters