From Jerusalem Post:
01/29/2014Calling John Kerry. He, and you, should read the rest of this here.
Israel’s ability to deter enemies is strong, but on the other hand terror is still a challenge, Military Intelligence head Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi said on Wednesday during remarks at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
“We call this period in time the ‘era of fire’ in light of the amount of missiles and rockets we face as a constant threat,” Kochavi said. “There are about 170,000 rockets and missiles that threaten Israel.”
Kochavi added that the country was “surrounded 360 degrees with active enemies. The conventional threats have not disappeared.”
[...]
“The countries around us are busy with themselves, they have less funds to start a war,” he explained. “There is no question that there is a decrease in such threats but they have not given up.”
Regarding Egypt, Kochavi said that “any retreat of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region is significant for Israel.”
He also said that Syria had become a vacuum for the Islamic Jihad and that some of the al-Qaida militants going there to fight had bases in neighboring Turkey and could easily access Europe from the NATO member state. He stressed that very few countries in the region fully control all of their land and all of their borders.
Presenting a map of the Middle East marked with areas of al-Qaida presence, Kochavi told the conference that al-Qaida fighters from around the world enter Syria weekly “but they do not stay.”...
Also, go read what an Israeli Soldier's Mother has to say about this here.