(BBC)

TEL AVIV – Israel arrested a suspected Syrian militant operating on Israeli soil accused of preparing attacks against the Jewish state, WND has learned.

The militant was arrested July 29, weeks before Israel's Sept. 6 air raid on a remote site in Syria that has been described by independent analysts and some U.S. politicians as a potential Syrian nuclear reactor.

Security officials would not say whether the arrest was tied to the air strike. According to security sources, his activities were known to Israeli intelligence agencies for at least one year prior to his arrest.

Sources indicated the arrest was ordered as part of a series of other steps taken to ensure against Syrian retaliation following the Israeli air raid.

Israel has acknowledged carrying out the September air raid after earlier denials but has given no details on the target, which some analysts have said was a nascent Syrian nuclear reactor constructed with the aid of North Korea.

Earlier this week, an independent monitoring group told the New York Times that Syria has commenced construction on a new building at the same site bombed by Israel.

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The Syrian, whose name is being withheld by security sources for operational reasons, was a legal resident of Buqata, a largely Druze village in the Israeli Golan Heights. He was arrested at his home during a nighttime police raid.

The Golan Heights is strategic mountainous territory captured by the Jewish state after Syria twice used the terrain to attack Israel. It has a population of about 35,000 – approximately 18,000 Jewish residents and 17,000 Arabs, mostly Druze. The Arab residents retain their Syrian citizenship, but under Israeli law they can also sue for Israeli citizenship.

The Israeli police withheld information about the July arrest of the suspected Syrian militant and imposed a complete Israeli media blackout on the case.

According to informed sources, the arrest docket officially charges the suspected militant with establishing relations with enemy agents.

Security sources involved with the arrest told WND the militant is accused of gathering intelligence on Jewish communities and Israeli military positions in the Golan Heights and passing the information to the Syrian government and to elements in Syria seeking to use the information to mount Hezbollah-style guerrilla raids and attacks against the Golan.

In 2006, WND broke the story Syria was in the early stages of forming a guerrilla group threatening attacks against Israeli positions and Jewish communities in the Golan Heights, according to security sources.

The Syrian militant arrested in July is suspected of working for the guerrilla group.

During a widely-circulated interview in August 2006, a senior official from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Baath party told WND the new guerrilla group, called the Syrian Committees for the Liberation of the Golan Heights, would launch "resistance operations" if Israel didn't vacate the Golan.

One month later, a man identified as the leader of the new Committees gave an interview to state-run Iranian television.

Amos Yadlin, head of the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence branch, told the Knesset last October that Syria is indeed forming a Hezbollah-like group.

Last February, the Committees for the Liberation of the Golan faxed a letter to Israeli news agencies claiming it was holding Guy Hever, an Israeli soldier who went missing in the Golan in 1997. The Committees said they would release Hever in exchange for nine Syrians held in Israeli jails.

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