Mystery deepens over Israeli strike on Syria

The media continuously speculates the destruction of Israel by Iran, Syria and other so called Arab state, but the real aggressor occupies and attacks its neighbours little is mentioned nor questions asked by the West. I suppose some of our brothers are more equal than others...

Taken from The Independent, UK, 15 September 2007
By Donald Macintyre

Israel is still maintaining official silence a week after Syria complained that Israeli aircraft invaded its airspace in a mysterious incident which raised tensions and triggered a welter of US media speculation about possible targets for the operation.

Explanations – for what anonymous US officials have said was a strike inside Syria – range from suggesting it was aimed at the shipment of weapons to Hizbollah from Iran, to saying Syria may be building a nuclear facility with North Korean help.

Syria, which has asked for a formal complaint to be "circulated" to the UN Security Council, said last week that Israeli aircraft unloaded ammunition after being spotted and fired on by its air defences but inflicted no damage.

Reuters, The New York Times and CNN have all quoted officials – mainly in the US – as saying that Israel carried out a strike in Syria. Reuters quoted an unnamed US official on Wednesday as saying: "The strike I can confirm. The target I can't." The agency quoted another US official as saying that reports on the targets were "confused".

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported this week a US official as saying that recent satellite imagery, mainly provided by Israel, suggested that Syria may building some form of nuclear facility with the help of material unloaded by North Korea.

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, did little to discourage such speculation when she told Fox News this week in response to a question about possible nuclear developments in Syria that her government is working to prevent "the world's most dangerous people from having the world's most dangerous weapons".

The only hint – if such it was – dropped by an unusually taciturn Israel was the release of a video by the Israeli military shortly after the incident showing a broadly smiling Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazy, shaking the hands of his deputy while sharing a Jewish New Year toast. This has helped to fuel speculation that Israel had conducted a successful mission in Syria.

Syria has not fought an outright war with Israel since 1973 when it briefly overran and was then repulsed from the Golan Heights, sovereign Syrian territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War six years earlier. Syria has long agitated for return of the Golan while Israel blames Damascus for its succour to Hizbollah and militant Palestinian factions like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

There have been persistent reports over the last year that the US has discouraged Israel from responding to oblique overtures from the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a negotiated recovery of the Golan. The New York Times quoted equally anonymous US sources on Wednesday as saying that the likely targets were weapons shipments Israel believed Iran was sending to Hizbollah through Syria. That claim was dismissed later in the day by Bashar Ja'afari, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations.

"This is blah blah," Mr Ja'afari said. "This is nonsense, this is an unfounded statement. It is not up to the Israelis or anyone else to assess what we have in Syria. There was no target, they dropped their munitions. They were running away after they were confronted by our air defence."

European diplomats who met with the Syrian Vice-President, Walid Moallem, reportedly formed the impression that Syria was not planning a military retaliation. But the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister, Faysal Mekdad, warned after a meeting with his Russian counterpart yesterday that growing tension could yet spark violence in the region and that Syria has the "means to respond in ways that will preserve its position of power".

Israel: Talking Of Peace, Preparing For War

Taken from The Guardian, UK, June 11, 2007
Conal Urquhart

In temperatures of more than 40 degrees, Israeli soldiers are moving in formation up the slopes of Mount Hermon in full battle dress, a few miles from the Syrian border.

Down on the main plateau of the Golan Heights, new army camps are being set up and there are more military than civilian vehicles on the roads that link old battlefields and new vineyards.


An Israeli tank takes part in a military exercise. Last week the Israeli army carried out a training attack on a mock Syrian village in the south of Israel. Photograph: EPA

Despite talk of peace, both Syria and Israel are preparing for war amid mutual distrust and confusion. "There has never been such a state of readiness since the 1980s and there is a great danger of a chain reaction if one sides makes a mistake in reading the other's intention," said Eyal Zisser, a strategic analyst at Tel Aviv University.

Both Israel and Syria are issuing contradictory signals. In August last year, President Bashar Assad of Syria said he was interested in peace with Israel but would consider war to regain the Golan Heights, lost by Syria 40 years ago.

Last week, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, sent messages to Mr Assad that Israel was willing to give up the Golan in return for a peace deal. The messages were conveyed at the same time as the Israeli army carried out a training attack on a mock Syrian village in the south of Israel.

According to Mr Zisser, the confusion is caused by Israel's uncertainty over its own desires and the intentions of President Assad.

"We don't know how serious Assad is regarding war or peace. There is also confusion on the domestic implications for the government. Then there is also the question of the attitude of the United States, which is currently against negotiations with Syria," he said.

In the meantime the armies are training and maintaining a high state of readiness. "What you can see is military preparations on both sides. Armies have their own logic. If there is a possibility of war then they prepare for it," said Mr Zisser.

The 40,000 residents of the Golan continue with their work in farming and tourism, accustomed to living in a frontier province which is as marked by war as the fields of Flanders.

The Golan begins at 200 metres below sea level at the Sea of the Gallilee and rises to 2,800 metres at the top of Mount Hermon. Most of the land is a gently sloping plateau guarded by eight volcanic plugs that overlook Syria. Some of the plugs are fortified and others are crowded with antennae, radar and observation equipment to monitor Syrian activity.

Much of the west of the plateau is covered by Syrian minefields and every few miles there is a war memorial, old tank or derelict barracks. Half of the residents of the Golan are Druze; they retain their Syrian nationality and reject Israel's rule over them in theory, but cooperate with it in practice. Around 100,000 residents of the Golan left their homes during the 1967 war and were not allowed to return by Israel. The other half are Israeli settlers who continue to move to the Golan despite the common understanding that Israel will return it all to Syria in return for a peace deal.

Albert Hecht, a Golan resident originally from Glasgow, said that there was an obvious increase in Israeli military activity.

"You do sense there is a military build up going on. For years there was very little training here and now they are reopening camps that have been empty for years.

"We are in a constant state of readiness. We were hit by a few missiles last year from Lebanon and we all have bomb shelters. We are pretty sure that if things take a turn for the worse the army will be able to evacuate us very quickly," he said.

The residents of the Golan say that they live as if they will live here forever. "We have built home, businesses and vineyards here. No one told us to stop growing," said Mr Hecht.

The local council says that 1,500 families have moved to the region in the last five years and there is strong investment. The main town of Qatzrin has a newly built mall, featuring a micro-brewery, a winery and multimedia shows that offer a very partisan history of the Golan to tourists.

Moti Bar, the manager of the micro-brewery and restaurant, said that he did not expect the talk of war to deter tourists who make a major contribution to the local economy. "Israelis are used to this kind of atmosphere, they do not plan their holidays according to the news. They understand politics and that the things that appear in the news are not always as they seem. If we did not then we would have no life at all," he said.

Golan settlers, unlike their counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza, are not driven by religious conviction and admit that Israeli sovereignty over the Golan could be traded for peace. Both Mr Hecht and Mr Bar said they hoped that any peace deal would involve Israel leasing back the Golan from Syria for a period of 20 to 100 years.

However, the Druze residents who are clustered on the slopes of Mount Hermon in the north-east of the Golan, see the settlers' work in a different light. Ayman Abu Jabel, who served 12 years in an Israeli jail for throwing a grenade at an army base, had little sympathy for the settlers.

"The settlements must be destroyed and the settlers must leave. It is not their land. Everything they have is stolen," he said.

Mr Abu Jabel said there were economic advantages to living under Israeli occupation but added: "I would be happier to have the bad things of my own country rather than the good things of Israel."

Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn To Sex Trade In Syria

Taken from The New York Times, May 29, 2007
By KATHERINE ZOEPF

MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”

Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include more female-headed households and unaccompanied women.

“So many of the Iraqi women arriving now are living on their own with their children because the men in their families were killed or kidnapped,” said Sister Marie-Claude Naddaf, a Syrian nun at the Good Shepherd convent in Damascus, which helps Iraqi refugees.

She said the convent had surveyed Iraqi refugees living in Masaken Barzeh, on the outskirts of Damascus, and found 119 female-headed households in one small neighborhood. Some of the women, seeking work outside the home for the first time and living in a country with high unemployment, find that their only marketable asset is their bodies.

“I met three sisters-in-law recently who were living together and all prostituting themselves,” Sister Marie-Claude said. “They would go out on alternate nights — each woman took her turn — and then divide the money to feed all the children.”

For more than three years after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi prostitution in Syria, like any prostitution, was a forbidden topic for Syria’s government. Like drug abuse, the sex trade tends to be referred to in the local news media as acts against public decency. But Dietrun Günther, an official at the United Nations refugee agency’s Damascus office, said the government was finally breaking its silence.

“We’re especially concerned that there are young girls involved, and that they’re being forced, even smuggled into Syria in some cases,” Ms. Günther said. “We’ve had special talks with the Syrian government about prostitution.” She called the officials’ new openness “a great step.”

Mouna Asaad, a Syrian women’s rights lawyer, said the government had been blindsided by the scale of the arriving Iraqi refugee population. Syria does not require visas for citizens of Arab countries, and its government had pledged to assist needy Iraqis. But this country of 19 million was ill equipped to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of them, Ms. Asaad said.

“Sometimes you see whole families living this way, the girls pimped by the mother or aunt,” she said. “But prostitution isn’t the only problem. Our schools are overcrowded, and the prices of services, food and transportation have all risen. We don’t have the proper infrastructure to deal with this. We don’t have shelters or health centers that these women can go to. And because of the situation in Iraq, Syria is careful not to deport these women.”

Most of the semi-organized prostitution takes place on the outskirts of the capital, in nightclubs known as casinos — a local euphemism, because no gambling occurs.

At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, there is even a floor show with an Iraqi theme.

One recent evening, waiters brought out trays of snacks: French fries and grilled chicken hearts wrapped in foil folded into diamond shapes. A 10-piece band warmed up, and an M.C. gave the traditionally overwrought introduction in Arabic: “I give you the honey of all stages, the stealer of all hearts, the most golden throat, the glamorous artist: Maria!”

Maria, a buxom young woman, climbed onto the stage and began an anguished-sounding ballad.

“After Iraq I have no homeland,” she sang. “I’m ready to go crawling on my knees back to Iraq.” Four other women, all wearing variations on leopard print, gyrated on stage, swinging their hair in wild circles. The stage lights had been fitted with colored gel filters that lent the women’s skin a greenish cast.

Al Rawabi’s customers watched Maria calmly, leaning back in their chairs and drinking Johnnie Walker Black. The large room smelled strongly of sweat mingled with the apple tobacco from scores of water pipes. When Maria finished singing, no one clapped.

She picked up the microphone again and began what she called a salute to Iraq, naming many of the Iraqi women in the club and, indicating one of the women in leopard print who had danced with her, “most especially my best friend, Sahar.”

After the dancers filed offstage and scattered around the room to talk to customers, Sahar told a visitor she was from the Dora district of Baghdad but had left “because of the troubles.” Now, she said she would leave the club with him for $200.

Aid workers say $50 to $70 is considered a good night’s wage for an Iraqi prostitute working in Damascus. And some of the Iraqi dancers in the crowded casinos of Damascus suburbs earn much less.

In Maraba, Umm Hiba would not say how much money her daughter took home at the end of a night. Noticing her reluctance, the club’s manager, who introduced himself as Hassan, broke in proudly.

“We make sure that each girl has a minimum of 500 lira at the end of each night, no matter how bad business is,” he said, mentioning a sum of about $10. “We are sympathetic to the situation of the Iraqi people. And we try to give some extra help to the girls whose families are in special difficulties.”

Umm Hiba shook her head. “It’s true that the managers here are good, that they’re helping us and not stealing the girls’ money,” she said. “But I’m so angry.

“Do you think we’re happy that these men from the gulf are seeing our daughters’ naked bodies?”

Most so-called casinos do not appear to directly broker arrangements between prostitutes and their customers. Zafer, a waiter at the club where Hiba works, said that the club earned money through sales of food and alcohol and that the dancers were encouraged to sit with male customers and order drinks to increase revenues.

Zafer, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, refused to discuss specific women and girls at the club, but said that most of them did sell sexual favors. “They have an hourly rate,” he said. “And they have regular customers.”

Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.

From Damascus it is only about six hours by car, passing through Jordan, to the Saudi border.

Syria, where it is relatively easy to buy alcohol and dance with women, is popular as a low-cost weekend destination for groups of Saudi men.

And though some women of other nationalities, including Russians and Moroccans, still work as prostitutes in Damascus, Abeer, a 23-year-old from Baghdad working at the same club as Hiba, explained that the arriving Iraqis had pushed many of them out of business.

“From what I’ve seen, 70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis,” she said. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available.”

Syria Threatens Violence Over Arab Plan

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Apr. 16, 2007

Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal threatened on Monday evening to return the Golan Heights to Syrian hands "by way of resistance if Israel [rejects] the Arab peace initiative."

Bilal did not elaborate, but some analysts raised the possibility of either a full scale conventional war or a terror campaign in the Golan as one of the means to undertake a mukawama ("resistance" in Arabic).

After saying that "Syria wishes to revive the peace process with Israel with the help of US and Russian mediators," Bilal immediately added a threat, saying that "if Israel [rejects] the Arab peace initiative, the only way to get the Golan Heights back would be the way of resistance."

Bilal, speaking at a press conference in Damascus, was referring to the Arab peace initiative of 2002.

Bilal's belligerent remarks followed on the heels of a visit by Syrian-born American businessman Abe Suleiman to Jerusalem last week.

Suleiman promised the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that "peace with Syria could be achieved within six months."

George Jabour, a Syrian member of parliament, said Suleiman was speaking on his own behalf and was in no way affiliated with the Syrian leadership. "Suleiman has zero credibility in the eyes of Syrians," Jabour said.

Bilal echoed Jabour's statements in an interview he gave on Syrian TV on Saturday, quoted by SANA (the Syrian Arab News Agency). He said that all the Syrian people stood behind President Bashar Assad's leadership for the achievement of just and comprehensive peace in the region.

He defined this "just and comprehensive peace" as the restoration of the "whole occupied Syrian Golan," what remained of the Lebanese territories under occupation, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Bilal also demanded the recognition of the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homeland.

While Bilal echoed the tenets of the Arab peace initiative, rejected by Israel wholesale, his demands went beyond the more recent Saudi initiative, which remains vague on the question of the right of return.

Jerusalem did not fully accept the Saudi initiative either, saying only that it contained a basis for further negotiations.

During the Second Lebanon War, Syria made peace overtures by agreeing to "unconditional" negotiations with Israel.

However, as soon as a cease-fire was achieved and Syria no longer feared possible engagement with the IDF as part of its campaign against Hizbullah, the Syrian leadership denied any willingness for unconditional negotiations.
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The Golan belongs to the Syrians, the longer Israel holds on to this beautiful piece of land the greater the chance that it will keep it long term and enable Jewish settlers to live there. This piece of land has been illegially occupied by isreal and this has been recognised by the UN. If Syria do take back their property using force then i'm sure no one will blink an eye lid - after all it is thier land. Why doesn't the Isreali government return these lands back to Syria and start talking peace with it's Arab neighbours. By building peace and encouraging trade between Arab countries, it will make Israeli citizen more safer. That is the only way foreward.

Incidently this week the Israel Air Force has expressed newfound interest in receiving the F-22 - a US-developed fifth generation stealth fighter jet - and has requested that the Defense Ministry present the request on its behalf to the Pentagon. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz met with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week. Gates was here for talks with government officials on a range of key strategic issues including American plans - which Israel has objected to - to sell smart bombs to Saudi Arabia. The F-22 formally entered operational service in the US Air Force in December 2005 but has not yet been sold outside the US due to a federal law which barred export sale of the aircraft.