In the wake of the power vacuum left in Syria by the ousting of former dictator Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel is now facing new terrorism threats from the country on its northeastern border.

After Assad’s regime fell to the forces of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by former ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jilani), the southern territory of Syria bordering Israel was left with scant governance. Responding to the threat, Israel carried out over 400 strikes against military targets in Syria in December, including weapons stockpiles and naval ships.

Since then, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been stationed in a buffer zone just across the border from Israel. On Tuesday, it was reported that Israeli troops were attacked by a group of gunmen. After exchanging fire, an Israeli airstrike was carried out, and the IDF stated that five people were killed as a result, while no injuries to Israeli troops were reported.

As noted by The Times of Israel, the IDF has said that its presence in the buffer zone would be a “temporary defensive measure.” However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that troops would remain stationed there to provide security for “an unlimited period of time.” Defense Minister Israel Katz echoed the statement, remarking that nine army posts within the buffer zone would be manned “indefinitely.”

On Monday, Caroline Glick, International Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to discuss the Jewish state’s ongoing concerns with Syria, including Turkey’s involvement with its new government.

“[W]e’re very concerned … about this new government,” she emphasized. “We’re concerned because the leader of the new government is an ISIS terrorist. Some people think he’s reformed, some people think he didn’t reform, but he’s the one who has the burden of proof. So far, he hasn’t worn that burden particularly well in terms of proving his view of Israel. If there’s some interest in Turkey or in Syria in making peace with Israel, fine, we’re very happy to do so. But we’re not going to in any way endanger northern Israel, and that’s why Israel seized the top of the Hermon mountain range and destroyed the Syrian armaments of the Syrian military after Assad was overthrown. So we’re ‘trust but verify’ or ‘distrust and verify,’ but all it is Israel’s just defending ourselves [as well as] the Druze in southwest Syria.”

Glick went on to observe that while the new Syrian regime poses serious threats, Assad’s previous regime was perhaps equally as dangerous.

“[W]hat we see now is this new Sunni jihadist regime appears to have arisen in Damascus,” she noted. “And people say, ‘Well, you know, maybe we were better off with Bashar.’ And I think it’s important to realize that Bashar al-Assad was an Iranian proxy who committed genocide, an actual genocide against the Sunnis of his country [which] caused refugee flows and crises throughout Europe and beyond. And he is a monster. The fact that it took a while, apparently, for Putin to agree to take him in [is] very telling. … Iran is an existential threat not only to Israel, but to all of the countries of the region. … [I]f they’re able to achieve nuclear capabilities, it will be an absolute disaster of biblical proportions. And so that has to be dealt with, and Syria was a lynchpin of Iran’s empire that stretches from Tehran to the Red Sea with the Houthis and the Mediterranean Sea with Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza and Assad in Syria. So taking him out was a major blow to the Iranians and to Hezbollah. … And we should all be thankful that he’s gone, and what we have now [we] will have to deal with. … Nobody thought that it was going to be easy with Syria.”

Glick further reflected on the burdens being carried by Prime Minister Netanyahu as he must simultaneously take on the ongoing hostage crisis, keeping the Jewish state safe, and coordinating multiple war fronts.

“I really think that he is a historic figure,” she contended. “I think it’s not simply that he’s Churchillian. I think that they’re going to coin a new phrase of ‘Netanyahin’ or something like that. He defines moral courage. … [A]t the risk of sounding like a sycophant, I mean, it really is astounding. … [H]e has been heroic in his leadership of the war. There [are] so many different pressures on him … coming from 1,500 different angles, and to be able to withstand them and to just barrel forward and maintain total allegiance to the war goals and to advance them…”

“And it’s a miracle that we came this far,” Glick continued. “[T]he idea of taking 251 hostages is that Israel will not be able to destroy Hamas, because it will be too concerned about the release of the hostages. Well here, as we annihilate Hamas, we have already brought about the return of 194 hostages. So, it’s true we have 59 that we still have to get out. But nobody thought that we’d come this far, and we have. And I’d say that it’s a testament to his moral courage and to his wisdom that we’ve been able to do that.”