“Even if Syria disintegrates – or is undergoing disintegration – we don’t want Syria to be a kingdom of ISIS,”

What Dayan would like to see emerge from the Syrian chaos is the strengthening of ethnic/religious minorities.

“I am in favor of a Kurdish state and we want the Druse to have autonomy,” he says.

Getting back to Islamic State, Dayan notes that the Syrian-Israeli border was a secure frontier for a long time.

“We don’t want ISIS to be there. We prefer the Syrian army along the border,” he says, although he notes wryly that “a weak Syria is good for Israel.

Letting Islamic State deploy along the Israeli border could create a situation where Israel may one day find itself fighting Islamic State, Dayan says.

Dayan sees Islamic State as an idea or a vision that is bigger than the organization itself, and the threat posed to Israel by the group is not just on the Golan border.

“The main mission of the new head of the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] will be to prevent the formation of ISIS cells among Israeli Arabs and to prevent the group’s influence [from growing] in Gaza and the West Bank.”

On Israel’s eastern border, Islamic State poses a threat as well – not directly to Israel but to the economically struggling Hashemite kingdom, which, he says, is at real risk of destabilization.

“ISIS is an existential threat to Jordan,” Dayan states bluntly. Israel acts as strategic insurance for Jordan and must stay in control of the Jordan Valley to prevent Islamic State from penetrating the West Bank from the Hashemite Kingdom.

One security remedy for the Golan border, he suggests, would be “to form a security belt of 8 to 10 kilometers” to keep out rockets and jihadi groups, including the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida. “It would not be an easy task,” he admits.

In the effort to navigate Israel through the zig-zag complexities of the Syrian civil war – a conflict that has resulted in some 470,000 deaths, according to a report issued earlier this month by the Syrian Center for Policy Research – the key is for Jerusalem to pay close attention to its relations with the US, Turkey and Russia, Dayan says.

“It is quite a pity and a disappointment that Russia has become more reliable than Washington in the region,” says Dayan. He cited the Obama administration’s decision to abandon Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and support the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi as a pivotal point in the waning of American power in the region.