The risk of a wider conflict increases

[Violet_Crumble]

The US must strive to prevent a new war between Israel and its neighbours.

It has become a familiar and terrible pattern: a Palestinian suicide bomber detonates a bomb that kills many people and injures many more, provoking a military response from Israel. This time, however, Israel's retaliation was different. When a Palestinian blew herself up in a Haifa restaurant at the weekend, killing at least 19 people, the Sharon Government ordered an air strike against a training camp near the Syrian capital, Damascus. During the past three years of the Palestinian intifada, Israel has confined its reprisals and assassinations of the leaders and military commanders of Islamic Jihad and Hamas to the West Bank and Gaza; now, for the first time in three decades, it has attacked a target in Syria, raising the prospect that the Israel-Palestinian conflict may again flow over into a war between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

Israel insists that the camp was used by Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for the Haifa bombing, and by Hamas. Syria claims that the camp was disused and belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command. And in Washington, Bush Administration officials said that there was no firm evidence that the camp had been a terrorist base. But they also refrained from direct criticism of Israel's action, and pointedly said that they had "consistently told Syria that it must cease harbouring terrorists".

<snip>

Although the Sharon Government must know what it risks by attacking the territory of a neighbour, it appears resolved to do so again if similar circumstances arise. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli leadership has yet found the will to end the worsening conflict. If that is to happen, it will require concerted effort by the international community, and especially by the US. However, Washington will not bring about the Middle East peace it has so often called for by issuing statements that, while rightly condemning Palestinian terrorism, appear to wink at any form of retaliation Israel chooses.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/06/1065292524962.html

[LoneStarLiberal]

1. War with Syria Highly Unlikely

The Syrian strategic position right now is perfectly situated between the proverbial rock and the proverbial hard place.

Given that most of the Syrian leadership are all Alawi (a heterodox blend of Islam and Christianity), a religious minority in Syria, and that the Alawi only protect their power from the Sunni masses by carefully maintaining control over the military, economic, and political institutions of Syria, Bashir Assad and company cannot afford to go to war with Israel right now.

Sending the one institution that guarentees their power into a certain losing proposition in a country as politically restive as Syria is not something the Assad clan will allow to happen. The Israelis know this, too, which is why they are pressing them (the Syrians) so hard. They know that they can push the Syrians around some without Assad acting because Assad needs the Alawi-controlled army to keep him in power.

Basically everyone knows Assad is in a tough place and everyone is going to try to exact their pound of flesh.

[mddemo]

2. funny

I love it Syria says Israel was wrong to bomb the camp as it wasnt an Islamic JIhad camp, it belonged to another terrorist organization, you cant make this stuff up.