Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned a breach of Israeli airspace by a Syrian fighter jet on Tuesday, calling the incident a "gross violation" of a demilitarization agreement between Israel and Syria.
Israel "will not accept any such violation," whether from the air or ground, Netanyahu said after Israeli interceptor missiles shot the Syrian aircraft down.
In a statement, Netanyahu said he expected Syria to "rigorously" respect the 1974 agreement, which sets out a demilitarized zone along the shared Syria-Israel frontier.
The Israeli military said it shot down the jet after it penetrated 2 kilometers into Israeli territory. The incident comes as Syrian government forces retaking territory from rebels reached the Golan Heights frontier for the first time in seven years of fighting.
Following a preliminary investigation, the Israeli military said the Syrian aircraft had departed from the Syrian T4 air base in Homs, which Israel is believed to have targeted earlier this year.
IDF Spokesman in English Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Tuesday that the Syrian aircraft flew toward Israel at "relatively high speed" before breaching the country's airspace. He said it was unclear whether the plane deliberately crossed into Israel, as was the fate of the pilot. The plane crashed in the southern part of the Syrian Golan Heights, he said.
He said the increased activity near Israel's frontier with Syria put the military on "elevated alert" and prompted Israel to issue a number of warnings through different channels to ensure that the 1974 agreement would not be violated.
Shortly after the incident, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon remarked that Israel seeks "no escalation in the region."
Addressing the U.N. Security Council's monthly Middle East meeting Tuesday, Danon said that Israeli forces saw the jet "crossing the border … we tried to contact a few times, and there was no response."
In such cases, he explained, "the only thing we can do is to protect our civilians."
He went on to say that there was no time to "wait and see what the pilot's real intentions may be," and added that Israel's actions were "what any other country would do in a similar situation."
Danon stressed that "Israel will not tolerate any violation of our sovereignty – not from Syria, not from Gaza, not from any other enemy that threatens our security."
Meanwhile Tuesday, an official based in Syria and allied with Syrian government forces told reporters that Islamic State terrorists seized the body of the Syrian pilot after the jet crashed.
The official told The Associated Press that the fate of the second Syrian pilot remains unknown. He did not elaborate.
The official, aligned with the so-called "Axis of Resistance" (led by Iran and including Hezbollah and other groups fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces), spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
A sliver of land on the Syrian side of the border with Israel is still in the hands of Islamic State fighters.
