Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said Tuesday that the IDF will do everything it can to prevent a massacre of Syrian refugees who have taken refuge near the border with Israel.

Appearing before a session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Eisenkot said the IDF was very worried about the situation on the Golan Heights today, as well as the internal wars inside Syria. He said he was worried the IDF will have to deal with a flow of refugees from Syria to the Israeli border.

Eisenkot also spoke about the situation in the Gaza Strip, saying that organizations in Gaza that are more extreme than Hamas have been growing stronger recently, and have been conducting more significant operations there. Support for the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) in Gaza is estimated to be about 14 percent among local residents, and the IDF is making great efforts to prevent these organizations from growing more powerful, and at the same time is acting against the digging of tunnels, said Eisenkot.

The security situation in Gaza is very complex because of the internal conflicts between the various terrorist organizations, and the IDF is trying to improve the economic situation there, including by allowing trucks to enter through the border checkpoints, he said. The organizations affiliated with ISIS have also been growing stronger in Sinai, and are operating in cooperation with the terrorist organizations in Gaza, said Eisenkot.

Eisenkot made it clear that the security situation in the West Bank is good and there is stable security coordination with the Palestinian Authority. Every day, some 70,000 Palestinians with work permits are allowed to work in Israel, along with tens of thousands of others without permits.

In addition, the IDF will not call up reserve forces for operational duty in the next half year, and instead will devote this period to comprehensive training for the ground forces. Eisenkot said he does not remember a period in which the IDF has trained so intensively as it has been recently.