Posted on 07/04/2006 8:21:44 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
The IDF has raised the level of alert along the northern border with Syria out of fear that President Bashar Assad would launch a strike against Israel in response to a recent IAF buzz of his palace.
Syrian military forces, IDF officers confirmed Tuesday, have also gone on high alert, and the assumption in the IDF is that Assad would order a harsh military response if Israel decided to take additional steps against Damascus in relation to the kidnapping of Cpl. Gilad Shalit in the Gaza Strip.
The type of response is unknown at this stage, but officers said it could be a missile strike on IDF installations or communities in the North. Another possibility, military sources said, is that Syria would use its proxy - the Hizbullah in Lebanon - to launch an attack against Israel in its place.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday issued a veiled threat against Syria, vowing to strike "those who sponsor" the terrorists in the Gaza Strip who abducted Shalit. Speaking at a business conference in Beersheba, Olmert said he had ordered the IDF to push forward with efforts "to strike terrorists and those who sent them and those who sponsor them," an apparent reference to Syria. "None of them will be immune."
On Monday, Defense Minister Amir Peretz issued a similar threat, warning that Assad would be held personally responsible if Shalit was harmed. "We will know how to reach everyone involved in the kidnapping and everyone who is responsible for his fate," Peretz said.
Last week, four IAF fighter jets buzzed Assad's summer residence in Latakia, Syria, to try to pressure him to persuade Damascus-based Hamas leader Kahled Meshaal to release Shalit. Senior defense officials said Tuesday that Israel was considering taking additional steps against Syria as part of its overall effort to retrieve the abducted soldier.
According to the officials, Syria has raised its level of alert along the border in wake of last week's flyover of Assad's palace and would try to demonstrate military might if Israel took a similar action. Last week, the Northern Command was warned of the flyover before it happened, to give commanders stationed along the border time to prepare for a possible violent Syrian response.
Now, I understand that it was an open "message" to the Syrians that Israel will not stand idly by while Hammas orchastrates a terror campaign from Syria, but there are better ways to do it.
Mark
How does flying over equate with rocket launches, ground invasions, killing, dismembering, and POW taking? I'd say the paleoswineians have declared war, and committed war crimes by targeting schools hospitals and civilians!
If they knew Assad was there,they should have dropped a few 500lb'ers.Just kidding.
Does Syria even recognise Israel officially??
List a few
Provocation, or message to Syria that Israel has superior military forces and won't take any more crap? So let's face it, the muslim world in the middle east doesn't need any 'provocation' from Israel to attack them, because they already despise Israel and want to "wipe them (Israel) off the map".
In any case, until the Islamo-factists are dealt with severely and crushed once and for all as a threat, there will never, ever be peace in the middle east, or anywhere else for that matter. We are dicking around with something called the war on "terror", when even a headless chicken can figure out that real peace is an unobtainable dream so long as one billion muslims have any power whatsoever. They despise Western culture, they hate Jews, they hate Christians, they hate Hindus, and they hate every other religion and will never be appeased. Where there are no "infidels" to be murdered, they murder each other. They do not want to co-exist with the rest of the world, they want to dominate and control it.
Why we wait for Islam to obtain more wealth and power before we finally decide to take them on en masse is mystifying to me. I guess our children are going to have to deal with the real problem, and that's a damn shame.
They knew ;-)
Well....you've not paid much attention to the Israeli's over the yrs. This is their MO. Goodness...when I read they'd buzzed that terrorist president...I thought is Sharon directing this. Sounds just like Sharon...sounds like Israel's got some more GREAT WARRIORS...as Sharon was.
Islam delenda est!
So is sponsoring the folks who strap bombs to their own kids to kill Israeli kids. Who gives a hoot? I dont.
Perhaps it was because Syria has been supporting the Palis in the Gaza Strip. Israel was warning Syria to stay out of it.
Now if Syria wants to jump ugly against a regional superpower, well hey.
Given the Russians assistance in shipping a whole bunch of unknown truckloads of things into Syria, the whole matter could get very dangerous in a hurry.
Things are getting kinda hot aren't they?
No you're not....
They're already at war... Syria ain't terror central for nothing.
Indeed. The American Association of Atomic Physicists used to have this doomsday clock. It used to vary between 15 minutes to midnight and at the worst (1962) it was 4 minutes to midnight.
I wonder what time it is now? The Iranians saying they are going ahead with their program, and the NK's test firing an ICBM?
I'm not sure its going to matter to the Japanese that the missile failed. It certainly won't to Singapore and other pro-Western Asian nations. The Australians have to be getting a little nervous too, I would imagine.
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