Israeli Borders With Syria, Jordan Quiet : Reassurance: A tour of Israel’s eastern frontier finds no sign of military activity. ‘Things are as quiet as any time in our history,’ an officer says.

All is quiet on Israel’s eastern front.

Well, not quite. Huge Merkava (Chariot) tanks of the crack 7th Armored Brigade fired their main guns with echoing explosions as the vehicles maneuvered in an easterly direction toward the Syrian border.

But it was only a training exercise by the armored unit that once faced the entire Syrian tank onslaught during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and staved off invasion. Otherwise, the Israeli border with Syria from Mt. Hermon, and with Jordan from the Yarmuk River in the north to Eilat and Aqaba on an arm of the Red Sea, was silent--despite the tension created by the Persian Gulf crisis.

A two-day journey along that border, which lies along the Great Rift Valley, found Israeli patrols to be moving and watchful, but there was absolutely no sign of significant activity by Syrian and Jordanian military units.

“Things are as quiet as any time in our history,” a reserve officer said as he stood atop a bombed-out hospital and surveyed the ruined city of Kuneitra, the former capital of the Golan Heights captured by Israel in 1967 and returned to Syria after the 1973 War.

The only vehicles moving were the white trucks of the United Nations, which maintains a truce-observation force along the eastern border of the Golan Heights.

Other than the maneuvers of the 7th Armored Brigade, the main sign of activity was the pruning of the new vineyards that have been planted in the volcanic soil of the Golan plateau and the tending of grazing herds of beef cattle.

“In a way, the gulf crisis has reinforced the calm here,” said the retired officer. “Syria is sending troops to Saudi Arabia to face their No. 1 Arab enemy--Iraq. The last thing they want is trouble with us.”

Similarly, the only figures moving along the east side of the Jordan River were farmers tending the lush green patches of grain and vegetables.

Every evening, Israeli border patrols rake the unpaved gravel road next to the electronic double fence that twists and winds, following the trickle of the Jordan river.

And every morning, specially trained trackers examine the road for signs of infiltration.

On rare occasions they find footsteps, as they did a week ago, when they quickly disposed of the intruders in Jordanian army uniforms, killing one and wounding the other.

But these border-crossers were believed to be free-lance operators who did not represent any official patrol of the Jordan army. That army is not even based in the Jordan valley but in the hills and plains well to the east.

And from the Dead Sea all the way down the Wadi Araba to the Gulf of Aqaba, there is no security fence along the border, which is demarcated only by the deepest depression contour line in the below-sea-level desert valley.

“King Hussein is more worried about Saddam Hussein and what the Iraqi army may do than about Israel these days,” a senior military source observed. “We have given him the word that any move in our direction may cost him his kingdom.”

The calm of the Jordan valley and, more importantly, the Golan Heights, is soothing to Israeli military planners who, since the peace with Egypt was signed, have considered Syria with its powerful armed forces to be the chief threat to Israel’s physical security.

Iraq, sharing no common border with Israel, was viewed as a lesser threat.

But now Syria and Israel have a common interest in seeing--and seeking--the downfall of the Baghdad strongman, a curious state of affairs, providing still another political irony in the shifting sands of Middle East relationships.

“Syria realizes that if Iraq emerges victorious or unscathed from this crisis, it will have repercussions on Syrian security,” commented Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, rector of Tel Aviv University and an expert on Syria.

Further, Rabinovich noted that Syrian President Hafez Assad views the support for Iraq by Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as vindicating Syria’s hostility to that group.

But Yossi Olmert, chief government spokesman and former professor of Arab affairs, said it is incorrect to assume that Syria will adopt a more congenial policy toward Israel simply because of both countries’ anti-Iraq attitude.

Some Middle East analysts hopefully suggest that in taking the same side in the gulf crisis, Syria and Israel might plant the seeds for some kind of eventual compromise between Jersualem and Damascus, with Israel relinquishing part of the Golan Heights.

But Syria still insists on the return of the whole Golan plateau up to the escarpment overlooking northern Galilee. And it is unclear whether Assad would agree to demilitarizing the area, even if Israel would give it back.

“I’m afraid that we shouldn’t expect any change in Syrian policy toward Israel in the future, simply because of the gulf crisis,” said Olmert.

And that is why the massive Merkava tanks conduct regular shooting exercises on the Golan Heights--determined not to be caught with their guard down, as they were during the first grim October days of the 1973 War.