Syrian rebels control almost all the villages near the frontier with the Israel-held Golan Heights, the Israeli defense minister said Wednesday, November 14, bringing the conflict dangerously close to the Jewish state and raising the possibility of an armed clash with the region’s strongest power, the Associated Press reported. During a tour of the Golan Heights, Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave a scathing assessment of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and said Israel will remain “vigilant and alert.” The civil war in Syria has renewed tensions over the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967. Despite hostility between the two countries, Syria has been careful to keep the border quiet since the 1973 Mideast war. But in recent days, Israeli troops have fired into Syria twice after apparently stray mortar shells flew into Israel-held territory.