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Syria Says Israel Bombs Territory
DAMASCUS - Syria accused Israel of bombing its territory on Thursday and said it could respond to its neighbor's "aggression and treachery".
Israel refused all comment on the report, which said no casualties or damage were caused.
Oil prices were up more than $1.40 a barrel, in part on concerns over the reported attack.
After months in which talk of reviving long-stalled peace negotiations has been mixed with speculation on both sides that the other was preparing a surprise attack, Syrian officials hit out.
"This shows that Israel cannot give up aggression and treachery," Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told al-Jazeera television.
Another Syrian official said: "They dropped bombs on an empty area while our air defenses were firing heavily at them."
The Israeli military spokesman's office said in a statement: "It is not our custom to respond to these kinds of reports."
The office has typically commented on such reports, but a security source said the government had imposed a news blackout on the issue. A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also said there would be no comment beyond the military statement.
The White House also declined comment.
It is over a year since Syrian guns opened fire on Israeli aircraft and Israeli jets last struck in 2003 across a border that remains tense but largely quiet 34 years after the last war between the two neighbors ended in an edgy ceasefire.
Military analysts said Israel has conducted reconnaissance flights over Syria to probe its defenses. One suggested that an aircraft may have run into technical problems.
Turkish and Israeli officials denied a report from an Israeli military source that the Israeli air force had trained in friendly Turkey as recently as this week. The last exercises had concluded last month, officials in Ankara said.
"INFILTRATION"
The Syrian official news agency SANA said Israeli aircraft "infiltrated Syrian airspace through the northern border coming from the direction of the Mediterranean and headed towards northeastern territory, breaking the sound barrier".
"The Syrian Arab Republic warns the government of the Israeli enemy and reserves the right to respond according to what it sees fit," SANA added.
Local residents said they heard the sound of five planes or more above Tal al-Abiad area on Syria's border with Turkey, about 160 km (100 miles) north of the Syrian city of Rakka.
Tensions between the two neighbors have been high in recent months. Some Israeli intelligence officials have suggested President Bashar al-Assad's administration might be ready to try to take by force parts of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the war of 1967 and held on to in fighting in 1973.
Syrian officials have said Syria was seeking peaceful means to liberate the territory, although some have also indicated that force remained an option if diplomacy failed.
Olmert, who launched his forces against Syrian-allied Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon a year ago, has been at pains to say he has no hostile intentions toward Damascus.
Some Israeli military officials have expressed alarm at what they say are reinforcements of Syrian positions and arms purchases. But Olmert has spoken out against alarmist comments.
He has also said he would like to reopen peace negotiations that have been stalled for seven years. Syrian officials, too, have said they would like peace. But there has been little sign of any concrete steps towards rapprochement.
Syria last said it fired at Israeli warplanes in June 2006, when Israeli aircraft buzzed a Syrian presidential palace.
Israeli officials said at the time the flyover was a message to cease support for Hamas after the Palestinian militant group abducted an Israeli soldier.
Israel has long warned Syria to stop supporting militant Palestinian groups and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
Israeli jets bombed an empty Palestinian militant training camp in Syria in October 2003.
(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Dan Williams and Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem;)
© 2007 Reuters
38 Comments so far
Show AllWere these bombs signed by Israeli schoolchildren?
Or are the children disappointed that they didn't get the chance to send their greetings to the neighbors?
Israel bombs parts of Syria, the U.S. moves nuclear weapons from South Dakota to Louisiana... setting the stage for WWIII??
And so it begins....Israel hopes for retaliation and will turn around and blame Syria for attacking them. then they can go in and destroy Damascus as they did Beirut. And the wicked Bitch from the west will go to Damascus and give blankets and at the same time provide more cluster bombs to Israel. Looks like it wants a repeat of last year.
Funny how it is ok for Israel to violate other peoples territory but not otherwise. It is the most hypocritical racist apartheid regime.
Same old skata. As if Syria has equal air power or nuclear weapons like Israel. So, Syria gets ground to air missiles from Russia & Iran. When does this stop? Aggression, escalation and Israel will blame the Arabs. Maybe no one remembers, but Israel occupies stolen land from the Arabs and continues to steal. Who gave the U.N.(the U.S. & Britain after WW II) the right to give Israel land which wasn't theirs to give? How many Palestinians had their land stolen, were displaced and still treated like animals? Want to settle these issues? Go back to 1948 and start over!
nicnews -
"Maybe no one remembers, but Israel occupies stolen land from the Arabs and continues to steal"
The land of Israel, also known as Canaan, Palestine, Judea, The Holy land, Zion, The Kingdom of Jerusalem, has been the national home for Jews long before the Arabs emerged from Arabia on the 7th century.
When Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bet Lehem - the people he met were Jews, and not Arabs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
You were saying???
Didn't I read somewhere that the US and Israel needs to Errr make Syria have a change of mind so they can pump Iraqi oil to Hafia....Hmmm maybe thats why there are 3 permanent vases being built along that pipeline route...it dont take a blind man with a seeing eye dog see which countries are the terrorists
Lets see AIPAC, the neocons, and Likud government supported a war against Iraq and Lebanon and now is pressing for war against Iran. Syria is next. Its obvious Israel is the aggressor in the region.
Lets see AIPAC, the neocons, and Likud government supported a war against Iraq and Lebanon and now is pressing for war against Iran. Syria is next. Its obvious Israel is the aggressor in the region not to even mention the apartheid they have going against the Palestinians.
By the way Iranians are not Arabs they are Persian and other ethnic groups.
vets "The land of Israel, also known as Canaan, Palestine, Judea, The Holy land, Zion, The Kingdom of Jerusalem, has been the national home for Jews long before the Arabs emerged from Arabia on the 7th century."
So is New York by indians. Would you please get out of there ?
what is the difference between an arab and a jew of jesus christ days ? aren't they all semites ? You forgot to add that some tribes are still waiting for the messiah and some jewish tribes decided to create their own messiah called mohammed instead of following Jesus.
power corrupts be it the nazis or current neo nazis.
Bushco has been trying to get Israel to expand their war on the Palestinians -- and Lebanon -- into Syria -- !!!!
As soon as they build a pipeline to Haifa--that pipeline will be bombed.
It cant work, like the state of Israel itself.
Their arrogance and aggression is so disgusting; as if they can bomb another nation and then just sit back, censoring their own media and saying nothing about it. The UN needs to penalize the rogue nation of israel without further hesitation.
dcbeltway "Its obvious Israel is the aggressor in the region"
It's not Israel dcbeltway, it's the Israeli government.
They need to justify a huge defence budjet to the Israeli public.
Why are we sending so much of our tax money to the land of Zion? What have they done for our USS Liberty? I really think that both of our political parties have sold out to a foreign power. I hope we can secede in voting in a Green president.
Kermet in `08!
They just have not given up on what some have termed greater Israel http://geocities.com/operationshekhinah2/two.html
Ok vets do you prefer I refer to them as the Likud party?
dcbeltway, The Likud party is currently not part of the Government.
It would be more appropriate to blame Kadima party (Olmert - the Prime Minister) or the labor party (Barak - the Defence Minister)
Ok then the Kadima party wants constant war with Israel's neighbors. When do you Israelis vote these bastards out? Can't we just exile Kadima and the American Neocon Bushite Republicans to some island somewhere so the rest of us in this world can live in peace?
According to one of my historical atlases, the area known as Israel/Palestine has also been under the control of:
(going backwards in time)
The Roman Empire
Seleucid Kingdom
Ptolemaic Kingdom
Kingdom of Antigonus
Empire of Alexander (the Great)
Persian Empire
Babylonian Empire
Assyrian Empire
Kingdom of the Hyksos
Akkadian Empire
The whole idea of ownership is obviously ephemeral.
Amazing how hard it is for we human beings to grasp that happiness is not hatred, that land is nothing that can be owned, that life is a fleeting and precious opportunity to elevate ourselves toward divinity, that our children are not benefited by ideologies at all oriented to self-interest, that the end result of aggression is never peace (if it were so, we'd have enough peace to power the world for a thousand millennia).
It would seem suffering is the preferred modality of the human species. It would seem compassion is in short supply these days. Are we going to suffer, or is our enemy going to become our best friend for teaching us patience, the importance of kindness, the wisdom of compassion? Anger about conditions only breeds more of the same. Tears, on the other hand, tears at how long this division between peoples has persisted, in each one a mountain of peace and healing, tears for all of us to have, Arabs, Israelis, Americans, British, French, Greek, Indian, Sudanese, Cambodian, Rwandan, Canadian, Jamaican, Turkish, Haitian, Irish, Sierra Leonese, Brazilian, Mongolian, East Timorese, Yugoslavian, Guatemalan, Tibetan, Icelandic, Swiss. When there are enough tears to fill a great lake on both sides of all borders, then we will have peace.
The picture of that jet makes me gag. I wonder how many burgers have to be flipped to pay for one of those. How many kids miss breakfast? How many families are left destitute by the IRS?
Only little people pay taxes.
ephemeral locust? I'd say delusional.
Interactive historical map of the Middle East:
http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf
By the way the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Macedonians,Sassanids, Seljuks, Ottomans,and European Colonialists all ruled over the Israel/Palestine area on the map during different periods in history. The biblical Israel was only a short time out of all this.
so... imagine for a moment that the UN gave Louisiana back to France. After a while the Frouisiench decide they quite fancy the look of Mississippi and Arkensas. The EU provides Frouisance with unlimited financial aid and military support.....
not entirely a parallel, but how the F**K do you think the Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas natives are feeling at this point?
Time the USA woke up to the whole Middle East situation and the question of dual citizens running their government.
Only in this "benevolent" nation can the elite con the drones into continued support for the terrorist nation of Israel, invade and murder over a million human beings and STILL the majority are too cowardly and misinformed to attack the REAL cause, (Israel), of turmoil there and at the same time get some payback for the sailors those treacherous bunch of bastards murdered in '67 aboard the USS Liberty by bombing THEM into the stone age. Hell I'd be so pleasantly excited over their new-found guts and brains that I'd re-up to get in on it and I'm sixty years old.
And if you go back far enough, we are all Africans. And black.
SEPTEMBER 15
Mass March in Washington DC!
Gather at 12 noon at the White House
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
Ok everyone, lets remove the borders on the planet. Make it one world, one free world.
Why not join the World Utopian Movement? We are going to make it a free world. Sound good? Check out my blog.
It's time to make a start, kick these war-mongering nations like America and Israel in the butt, clip their wings!
Cheers!
And then--- imagine after the UN so generously gives Louisiana back to France, the French take over Arkansas amd Missisippi, the UN tells them they have stepped over the line- get out, the French just flip the UN the finger and does what the hell it pleases, then Russia semds tons of money and support and helps the French subdue all the people in the region, and uses its power to vote down any attempt to control France. No reasonably cognizant person can honestly say they wouldn't be pissed off as all hell if they were an Arab.
Why do the majority of people bury their heads in the sand?1. Most of the population are educated only to a point that serves the system's requirements. 2. Later throughtout life they are so drained of energy and time, they cannot get off the treadmill set for them.3. Having to face the true reality of how the world is controlled is one big hell of a shock to the system - thats where the sand comes into it.
Getting back to the subject, Israel has so much power over everthing that happens because it has FINANCIAL CONTROL over most things. Simple really!!
for the full article...
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL0620459420070906?src=090607_1444_TOPSTORY_syria_bombing_report
Interesting spin here.
""It appears that the Israeli planes were on a reconnaissance mission when they got caught by Syrian defenses and were forced to drop their bombs and extra fuel tanks," said a Western diplomat in Syria's capital Damascus. He declined to be named."
____________________________________________________
We'll see where this goes. Doesn't look good though.
"Iran's ambassador to Damascus had contacted Syrian security officials and said that "Iran is ready to provide every kind of assistance to Syria," the official IRNA news agency reported."
dcbeltway September 6th, 2007 8:58 pm
Interactive historical map of the Middle East:
http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf
1. That interactive map showed the controlling Empires, and not the people who lived in the land. Under Persian, Greek and Early Roman periods, Jews were the majority of the people in the land.
2. During the Assyrian Empire time, southern Israel (From Jerusalem to the red sea) remained an independent state called "The Kingdom of Judea". Until it was taken by the Babylonians 100 years later.
3. The interactive map missed the time of the second tample. (Between the Greeks and the Romand) Judea was independant Kingdom between 142BCE and 63BCE.
During Roman times Judea was a vassal kingdom (King Herod etc.), and later on the Roman Province of Judea. Untill the 135AD when the Jewish rebellion ended, the people expelled, and the country was renamed Palestine.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/History/HISTORY-+The+Second+Temple.htm
In any case, "nicnews" theory that the Jews are some kind of invadors from other space who have Zero historical rights to the land of Israel can't hold water.
Having said that - Palestinians have historical rights as well.
Vets I never said that they were invaders from outer space-you did LOL nor did I say they didn't have historical rights. The problem is a lot of people have historical rights there and when Israel was a biblical Kingdom it was only a very short time. Jews, themselves were there for a long time correct but so were a lot of other people and actual Jewish rule was very short. As I am neither Christian or Jew the whole excuse of God granting the land to the Jews alone doesn't resonate with me. God is not a Real Estate agent last time I checked and if God was I would call this a subprime loan!
dcbeltway, I never said you said "Jews are invaders from outer space" I was responding to nicnews, not to you.
I believe Jews and Palestinians have (or at least should have) equal right to the land. Some of the commenters in CD tend to erase all Jewish history and claims only Palestinians have historical rights.
As for God - I don't know if there is a creator to the universe or not. But assuming that there is, I agree with you that he/she is not a Real Estate agent, or a subprime Bank. Nor do I respect people who claim they know what God wants.
vets:
What are you suggesting little boy? Should we all leave America and give it back to the Indians because they were there first?
Likewise, the Persian Impire stretched far and wide and covered many of Iran's present day neighbors. Should Iranians overrun those countries and treat their people the way Palestinians are treated? Better go get a six pack and watch sports on TV.
No Slone, I was suggestion NOT putting all the blame on only one side. What promped the historical desction was:
nicnews: "Maybe no one remembers, but Israel occupies stolen land from the Arabs and continues to steal. Who gave the U.N.(the U.S. & Britain after WW II) the right to give Israel land which wasn't theirs to give?"
My examples show that the reality is somewhat more complex than the simple picture where Arabs are the only ones with just claims for the land.
Also were exactly did I say that the Palestinians are treated well? You'r imagining things, maybe instead of giving me advise on what to drink and which channel to watch - you should quite smoking whatever it is you'r smoking.
As always we are way off topic here. The article is about Israel provoking Syria. Here is the grave danger in that:
Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact, which would mean that Iran would have to come to the military aid of Syria as well as the US being pledged to support Israel militarily. This means a Middle East regional wide war and WWIII and America caught in the middle along with our soldiers. Bad news very very bad news. Israel is determined to launch a war against Iran and get the US in by hook or by crook.