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Israel Threatens Syria with ‘Military Escalation’ over Hizbullah Attack
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Israeli medics help a wounded soldier on the occupied Shebaa Farms
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JERUSALEM,
August 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A day after a rocket and
mortar attack by the Lebanese militia wounded three Israeli soldiers,
Israel threatened Syria Friday, August 30, 2002, with "military
escalation" if Hizbullah attacks are not prevented.
The
strike on the Lebanese Shebaa Farms border area, occupied by Israel,
came the same day as Israel faced heavy political criticism after its
tanks killed four members of a Palestinian family in a botched
operation in the Gaza Strip.
"Israel
does not wish a military escalation, but if Syria, which pulls all the
strings in Lebanon, wants to trigger one through Hizbullah, it should
know that we will not sit idly by," an Israeli official told
Agence France-Presse (AFP), on condition of anonymity.
That
threat came on the heels of another Israeli warning by Defense
Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer after his meeting Thursday, August 29,
with U.S. Middle East envoy David Satterfield that "the Syrians
and the Lebanese are playing with fire."
Ben-Eliezer
said that Hizbullah attacks on Israeli positions on Shebaa Farms may
have been an attempt to antagonize Israel and warned Lebanon and Syria
that they were "playing with fire on the northern border,"
according to Ha’aretz.
In
Damascus, meanwhile, the chairman of the Syrian parliament's security
committee said Friday that "Israel's threats are nothing new, and
Syria will resist any Israeli attempt to embroil it in a war."
Ben-Eliezer and other Israeli officials raised the issue with
Satterfield during their meeting Thursday, telling him that they were
concerned that Syria and Hezbollah might attack Israel if America
attacked Iraq. Alternatively they might try to create a conflagration
on the northern border to preempt a possible American strike at Saddam
Hussein.
Satterfield replied that the Syrians are not interested in escalation,
nor are they interested in a head-on confrontation with Washington -
which would be the inevitable result of military action against Israel
aimed at disrupting a possible U.S. attack on Iraq. He added, however,
that the U.S. does fear that Syria might inadvertently cause an
escalation because it misjudged the limits of (so-called) Israeli
restraint.
Lebanese
Information Minister Ghazi Aridi told Al-Jazeera television station in
response that if anyone in the region was playing with fire, it was
Israel. He added that the Lebanese people would never give up their
right to resist the Israeli occupation of the Shaaba Farms.
Israel captured the Shebaa Farms during the 1967 war, and the small
mountainous area is claimed by Lebanon, with the backing of Damascus.
Hizbullah
is backed by Syria, the effective power-broker in Lebanon, and by
Iran.
The
group's guerrillas have been harrying Israeli troops occupying the
Shebaa Farms off and on since the Jewish state withdrew from southern
Lebanon in May 2000 after a two-decade occupation.
Meanwhile,
the attack on Israeli troops by Hizbullah threatens to complicate the
strategic picture in the Middle East, just as Washington is gearing up
for a possible attack on Iraq.
The
Thursday attack on the Shebaa Farms, the first since April 26, brought
quick retaliation in the form of an Israeli air raid on southern
Lebanon and a stern warning to Syria that Israel would "not sit
idly by".
Hizbullah
has intermittently exchanged fire with Israeli positions there from
its strongholds in the south, an area that it controls.
Despite
requests from the UN, Beirut has not disarmed the movement but allowed
it to dominate the area, from where it also often opens fire on
Israeli warplanes as they violate Lebanon’s airspace.
The
movement has been an inspiration to Palestinian resistance groups like
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, that followed Hizbullah example of
"martyrdom operations" or suicide bombings, which the
movement first used against U.S. and Israeli targets in Lebanon in the
1980s.
Like
its Palestinian counterparts, the group idealizes armed struggle and
"martyrdom" as the only ways to bring Israel to its knees.
Like them, it also sees "no legitimacy for the existence" of
Israel, its web site says.
Following
the September 11 attacks on the United States, Iran, Syria and Lebanon
came under increased pressure to rein in the group, which Washington
blacklisted as a terrorist organization.
In
his major policy address on the Middle East on June 24, U.S. President
George W. Bush called on Syria to rein in Hizbullah and stop supplying
it with money and equipment. Since then, U.S. press reports alleged
the group has links with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
However,
the group is absent from the recently updated European Union list of
terrorist groups.
Hizbullah
was created with Iranian help in the eastern city of Baalbek in 1982,
as Israel was carrying out a full-fledged invasion of Lebanon. It made
its first public appearance in 1985, when its military arm started to
carry out suicide bombings and shelling that struck fear in northern
Israel.
The
group counts about 3,000 regular guerrillas and can mobilize up to
7,000 combatants in emergencies.
Since
1992, Hizbullah has been headed by the soft-spoken Sheikh Hassan
Nassrallah, who replaced Abbas Musawi, killed in an Israeli air strike
against his convoy.
That
was also the year Hizbullah entered electoral politics. It now holds
12 seats in the 128-member parliament.
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