MOUNT HERMON, Israel — From the chairlift that climbs to the top of Israel’s only ski resort, I watch as the Hulleh Valley falls away 1,600 meters below. Soon we’re swooshing past Mt Hermon's 2,000-meter shoulder before emerging at its peak, in the breezy landscape where Syria, Lebanon and Israel meet.

Tranquil, transparent and lush — here, the panorama is more Switzerland than Levant. Stretching from Syrian meadows through Galilean forests to Lebanese rivers, this is one swathe of Middle East where the desert is nowhere to be seen.

Neither is war.

Yes, if you stick around long enough, the fratricide raging in surrounding lands will spit a stray mortar shell into the Golan Heights, immediately to this summit's south, triggering a retaliatory salvo from the Israeli army, but then quiet returns, often for weeks at a time.

Across the border, you can sometimes hear the rumble of bouts of artillery, but they are military anecdotes compared to what is happening in Aleppo, Homs, or Idlib, not to mention what happened 15 kilometers south of here in 1973, when 800 Israeli and Syrian tanks sparred in one of history's bloodiest armored battles.

War, many Israelis now feel, happens elsewhere.

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Until 2011, the Syrian army's presence along Israel's northern border constituted the main threat to Israel’s security.

Now these units are mostly gone; some went to fight elsewhere, some fell apart, leaving behind them abandoned camps, not unlike the medieval Crusaders whose crumbling bastions remain sprinkled around the area. One, named after biblical Emperor Nimrod, is tucked into Mt Hermon’s western slope.

The Lebanese-Shiite militia Hezbollah that a decade ago dragged Israel into a five-week war, is now up to its neck in the Syrian quagmire.

Gone from Israel's viewfinder is not only the Syrian army but the Iraqi army, which Israeli generals once expected would unleash — along with its Syrian and Iranian neighbors — a D-Day-like assault on the Jewish state.

Now, with Syria and Iraq embattled and disjointed, the menace once known as the Eastern Front is an anachronism.

Similarly, the Lebanese-Shiite militia Hezbollah that a decade ago dragged Israel into a five-week war, is now up to its neck in the Syrian quagmire, where one in 10 of its 30,000 troops has been either killed or wounded fighting for Bashar al-Assad.

Obviously, Israel's enemies have not been pacified, nor have they vanished.

Last year, the Israel Defense Forces’ drones reportedly killed an Iranian general 20 kilometers south of here, near Quneitra, along with six Hezbollah escorts. Hezbollah missiles then killed two Israeli soldiers while they patrolled Mt Hermon's western slope, some three kilometers from its chairlift.

Israel never confirmed whether it had targeted the Iranian general who, it was believed, was tasked with preparing a new Hezbollah front. Working by an unwritten rulebook of Middle Eastern belligerents, Iran quietly abandoned its ploy and Israel quietly swallowed the retaliation.

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Surrounded by multiple civil wars, one might expect Israel to get involved. It hasn't.

Down the slope from where I stand on Mt Hermon, Israel has opened a field hospital for casualties of the Syrian war. The military doctors who run the operation were ordered to treat anyone, regardless of affiliation.

Israel isn't taking sides because it once tried that course, and was traumatized, when it backed the Christians in the Lebanese civil war in 1982, hoping to produce a democratic Beirut at peace with Jerusalem.

The misadventure, which lasted 18 years and cost 1,000 Israeli lives, made Israelis vow to never meddle in their neighbors' feuds.

True, Israel last year warned Islamist rebels to stay away from Hader, a Tuscan-looking village down the mountain's Syrian slope. It is populated by the non-Islamic Druze minority, 30,000 of which live on the Israeli side of the mountain. The Islamists backed off, but Israel stopped at that, and avoided a broader promotion of Druze interests in Syria.

It is part of a new Israeli policy — and attitude — of neutrality.

Israel is not taking sides in Yemen's war or in Bahrain's Sunni-Shiite strife, though Jerusalem would like to see Iran's meddling in both theaters fail.

Nor does it have a hand in Libya's multi-tribal war. Israel is even shunning the Kurdish Syrians' struggle, though it has long backed their Iraqi cousins' cause. Siding with the Syrian Kurds would provoke Turkey, with which Israel has now reconciled with great effort.

Israel has created a coordination forum with Vladimir Putin's generals, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes pilgrimages to the Kremlin and avoids any statement about Moscow's warring on Israel's doorstep.

Further afield,Israel said nothing during the recently resolved Turkish-Russian row, and it is neutral toward the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, despite American misgivings. Israel has also signed strategic deals to lead its newfound gas to Greece, Cyprus, and also to that pair's nemesis — Turkey.

At the same time, Israel has gone out of its way to stay out of Russia's path in the Middle East. It has created a coordination forum with Vladimir Putin's generals, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes pilgrimages to the Kremlin and avoids any statement about Moscow's warring on Israel's doorstep.

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Standing on Mt Hermon's southern ledge, and tenting my eyes in the general direction of Dara, 60 kilometers to the south, where the Syrian civil war began, I am scanning the prairie abutting the Yarmouk River, where in 636 A.D. an Arabian army defeated the Byzantines, paving the way for Islam's penetration into Christian Anatolia and pagan Persia.

That fateful battle's protagonists are still on the field today, only now the Arabs are the ones on the defensive, wedged between the Byzantines' Russian successors and the Persians' Iranian heirs.

Incidentally, at the time, the Jews of Jerusalem had sided with the Persians, who momentarily seized the Holy Land and promised to restore the Jews' ancient temple.

Now, back on the chairlift, it occurs to me that today's Israelis would avoid such a gamble. They would have remained neutral and — like this humble ski resort — pretended they were Swiss.

Amotz Asa-El is senior commentator and former executive editor at the Jerusalem Post.