Israel launched its deepest raid into Syria in 30 years yesterday to bomb an apparently abandoned Palestinian ”terrorist training base” north of Damascus in retaliation for the suicide bombing of a Haifa restaurant that killed 19 people, including four children.
The Israeli government said the attack was a warning that ”terrorists” could not hide in neighbouring countries, prompting concern abroad of a widening of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But some members of Ariel Sharon’s cabinet were more concerned that the prime minister ordered the raid as an alternative to following through on the government’s decision last month to exile or even kill Yasser Arafat if the suicide bombings continued.
At an emergency UN security council meeting last night, Syria threatened to establish ”a resisting and deterring balance that forces Israel to review its calculations” and accused Sharon of exporting the conflict with the Palestinians.
The two countries technically remain at war exactly 30 years after Syria and its Arab neighbours attacked Israel on Yom Kippur. But there appeared little prospect of a serious Syrian military response to yesterday’s raid.
Instead, Damascus sought a security council resolution condemning Israeli ”military aggression”.
Syria said on Monday that Damascus wanted peace, but warned against the risk of escalation.
The government newspaper Tishrin said that ”Syria’s military forces led by President Bashar al-Assad must be prepared in the face of an enemy who seeks escalation and commits terrorist acts.”
Al-Baath, the daily of Syria’s ruling Baath party, said, ”Israel is killing and destroying in defiance of international law, because it is assured of American protection.”
It added, ”yesterday’s aggression by aircraft of the Zionist enemy inside Syrian territory calls for a strengthening of the struggle, because it shows once again that Israel will continue its aggressive policy.”
The Israeli UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, likened the Syrian move to Osama bin Laden calling for security council support after the September 11 attacks. Gillerman said he was aggrieved that the debate was being held on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and, after a vitriolic denunciation of the Syrian government for allegedly harbouring terrorists, he left the chamber.
The Israeli military described the target in Ein Saheb, about 38 kilometres north-west of Damascus, as ”a training camp used by terrorist organisations”, including Islamic Jihad which claimed responsibility for the attack by a female suicide bomber on a restaurant co-owned by Jews and Arabs in Haifa on Saturday.
A government spokesperson, Avi Pazner, said countries which support groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas could not claim the inviolability of their soil if Israel acted in ”self-defence”.
”Any country who harbours terrorism, who trains them, supports and encourages them will be responsible to answer for their actions,” he said.
But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said the camp was one of its deserted bases and that the only casualties were two slightly wounded guards.
Before the raid, three of Sharon’s ministers called on the prime minister to carry out the cabinet’s threat to ”remove” Arafat as an obstacle to peace following the Haifa bomb.
Eliezer Sandberg said the moment had arrived to expel or assassinate the Palestinian president after the bombing on the eve of the Yom Kippur religious holiday. Zevulun Orlev, a cabinet minister from the National Religious party, said if the Israeli government did not now move against Arafat it would look weak.
But the cabinet’s earlier decision is all the authority Sharon needs if he does decide to remove Arafat, and he will have been reluctant to face his ministers — who overwhelmingly are in favour of exiling the Palestinian leader — if he has decided against it for now.
Last night, Arafat declared a state of emergency in the Palestinian territories and installed a crisis government headed by his nominee for prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, in a move apparently aimed as staving off Israeli pressure.
”It is a very difficult situation because of the act in Haifa,” said Qureia after meeting Arafat.
”We decided that the situation is not to be tolerated … and therefore we have decided serious and very major steps are being taken.”
But the new prime minister did not elaborate other than to say that rival Palestinian security forces will be brought under a single command, hinting that the leadership may be preparing to meet an Israeli demand for a showdown with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Arafat said the bombing was a ”terrible attack and a big crime” against Jews and Arabs alike.
The Palestinian president’s supporters feared that the Israelis might move against Arafat within hours of the bombing.
About 30 Israeli and foreign activists gathered at his compound in Ramallah to offer themselves as human shields.
They included four Britons, among them Roy Ratcliffe, a 61-year-old history teacher from Devon who travelled to the West Bank to protect Palestinian olive pickers from attack by Jewish settlers.
”We are saying to the world that it is the Palestinian people who have the right to select or deselect their president, not anyone else,” he said. ”We will be collateral damage if that’s what it comes to.”
The Jewish activists were led by Uri Avnery, a veteran peacenik who was among the first Israelis to travel to Beirut to talk to Arafat in exile during the 1980s.
”The situation is clearly that Sharon intends to kill Arafat. But he depends on the Americans to give him permission and that hasn’t been given yet,” he said.
Avnery said the Israelis had no intention of allowing Arafat to go into exile: ”Forget the word ‘deport’. Deport is the euphemism for assassination. Everyone on the Israeli side knows that they will have to kill him. No one expects for a moment that Arafat will surrender without shooting. No one in Israel wants Arafat in exile, travelling the world promoting the Palestinian cause.
Sharon’s critics say that having threatened to ”remove” the Palestinian leader, the Israeli prime minister has painted himself into a corner because most of the public expects him to do just that.
But the bombing has also raised other questions about two of Sharon’s tactics in combating what he calls ”the terror” — the targeted killings of Palestinian fighters and the ”security fence” carved through the West Bank.
The female suicide bomber, Hanadi Jaradat, came from Jenin, a city that has been hit by Israeli forces for weeks. Among those killed by the Israelis were Jaradat’s brother and cousin in June. Those deaths and others not only failed to prevent Islamic Jihad from launching another attack but encouraged a new recruit in Jaradat. – Guardian Unlimited Â