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Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Iran is providing "generous" funding to help Syria beef up its forces, and those troops seem to be moving closer to the Israeli border, an Israeli daily reported on Thursday.Syrian President Bashar Assad and Iranian leaders reaffirmed their close ties at top-level meetings in Tehran earlier this week.Washington has accused both Syria and Iran of aiding -- or turning a blind eye -- to insurgents making their way into Iraq to fight U.S. and other Western troops. The U.S. also charges that the Syria and Iran are supplying weapons to Hizballah and helping the radical Islamic terrorist organization in its attempts to topple the pro-Democracy Lebanese government. The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported on Thursday that the Syrian military was strengthening its forces in an "unprecedented way" with the aid of "generous funding" from Iran.The Syrians are concentrating on building up their missile arsenal and long-range rockets to compensate for a weak air force, the paper said.Syria also is redeploying its troops closer to the Israeli-Syrian border on the Golan Heights, it said. (Israel shares a 45-mile border with Syria that runs through the Golan Heights.)Reacting to the report, Syrian parliamentarian Mohammed Habash said there is nothing new along the Israeli-Syrian border but that Syria is ready for every eventuality.In an interview with the Arabic television station Al-Arabiyah, Habash reportedly said if Israel is thinking about doing something stupid, it would pay a heavy price.Reserve Maj. General Amos Gilad of Israel's Ministry of Defense said Israel has no intelligence information indicating that Syria intends to launch an attack against Israel "in the coming months."Nevertheless, that assessment could certainly change "at any moment," Gilad said in a radio interview on Thursday.Syrian missile threatReserve Major General Jacob Amidror, the former commander of Israel's National Defense College who is now with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, noted that Israel has been attacked by rockets manufactured by Syria and used by Hizballah during the summertime war in southern Lebanon.If reports are true that Syria is boosting its rocket arsenal, it will be an "important factor" in any future war, Amidror told Cybercast News Service.Israel saw what enemy rockets could do to the northern part of the country last summer, he said. Hizballah launched more than 4,000 rockets and missiles aimed mostly at civilians during the 34-day war. The incessant attacks killed 43 people, displaced some 300,000 Israelis and forced many others to live in bomb shelters But according to Amidror, the war with Hizballah would pale in comparison with a war in which Syria launched its more numerous rockets at Israel.A war between Israel and Syria would be a "full scale" war, Amridor predicted. He said he would expect Syria to launch Scud missiles against Israel. Although the advanced Scuds have a range that would threaten all of Israel, the result would not be "so severe," given Israel's greater defensive capabilities, said Amidror.Israel's Arrow anti-ballistic missile system has proven itself to be up to 95 percent effective in intercepting such missiles in tests, he said. (The rockets that Hizballah fired at Israel last summer flew too low to be intercepted by the system.)Israel cannot judge whether the Syrians intend to use the missiles, Amidror said, and therefore it must be prepared to defend itself against the capabilities that Syria is building.No wishful thinkingFor years, some military experts have said that changing realities in the Middle East greatly diminished the possibility that Israel would face the threat of conventional war with its neighbors.But this line of thought is "nonsense" -- as was clearly proved by the Israeli-Hizballah war last summer, said Amidror.Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah actually did Israel a favor by provoking the war because it exposed Israel's "weak points" said Amidror. That has forced Israelis to return to a more realistic way of thinking, he added.http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200702/INT20070222b.html