Almost a month has passed since the drama in the skies of Israel and Syria, when Israel knocked down an Iranian drone that had penetrated its airspace and bombed Iranian targets in Syrian territory, and Israel lost a fighter jet to Syrian anti-aircraft artillery. In this time Syria hasn’t reported a single Israeli aerial attack on arms convoys, missile warehouses or army bases, reports that have been quite frequent in the last five years.

This hiatus will probably be transient. The underlying conditions on Israel’s northern front remain unchanged, even after that extraordinary exchange of firerpower. The decided advantage of the pro-Assad axis in the Syrian civil war gives its forces security and bolsters their drive to win, in compensation for their efforts invested in saving the Syrian tyrant back when his chances looked slim.

In a review that army intelligence delivered to the political echelon, the Israeli and Iranian moves were described as two powerful strategic trends that were all but fated to collide: the Iranian insistence on establishing a military presence in Syria, and the Israeli insistence on preventing it, stated time and again by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his AIPAC speech this week: “We must stop Iran. We will stop Iran.”

Read the full story at Haaretz.