Turkey evacuates villages close to Syria border Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister toured Golan to see the situation for himself. On Sunday and Monday there were exchanges of fire over that border too. "Almost all of the villages, from the foot of this ridge to the very top, are already in the hands of the Syrian rebels," he said. The Syrian army is displaying ever-diminishing efficiency. The worsening situation in Syria will be discussed on Thursday by the National Security Council in London. The government is being asked to decide whether to follow France in recognising the new Syrian opposition coalition formed in Qatar at the weekend as the "legitimate representative" of the Syrian people - effectively, an interim government. Britain, along with France, has indicated it is prepared to review the European Arms embargo to make it easier to provide weapons to the rebels. The West is keen to ensure that since the rebels are becoming better armed anyway, they can channel weapons away from jihadist and militant groups. That aim will have been reinforced by photographs that have appeared on the Facebook page of an Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, showing rebels with captured up-to-date Russian surface-to-air missiles, including the SA24. The Brown Moses blog, which monitors weapons in use in the conflict, said the weapons seemed to have been seized from captured regime bases.