Israel threatened to launch a military attack against Syria on Thursday, accusing Damascus of being directly implicated in a double Hamas suicide attack that killed 16 people.
As Israel’s top diplomats pressed their case that Damascus should pay the price for sheltering Hamas leaders, Deputy Defence Minister Zeev Boim dropped strong hints that a strike on Syrian targets could be imminent.
Syria dismissed the threat as lacking in credibility and denied any involvement in the bombings.
”The rule that ‘anyone who deals in terror against Israel is a target’ is a rule that must be stated and one that we must stand behind,” Boim told public radio, adding that Israel will take care not to cause a ”conflagration” on its northern border.
”It is possible to launch operations, provided that the targets are well chosen and that the moment is right, in order to make the Syrians understand that there are red lines that cannot be crossed,” he added.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom had earlier said that Syria ”is responsible for terrorist acts against us because this country is home of the headquarters of terrorist organisations and orders to carry out these attacks are given in Damascus”.
Syria ”must understand that this policy will have clear consequences … if we believe that Damascus has crossed a red line we will act”, he added.
Bomb order ‘came from Damascus’
Sixteen people as well as the two bombers were killed on Tuesday in a double suicide attack in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the radical Islamist movement Hamas, whose senior leader, Khaled Meshaal, is based in Damascus.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s official spokesperson, Raanan Gissin, said ”the order for the terrorist attacks comes directly from Khaled Meshaal’s bureau based in Damascus”.
Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara, however, denied any link to the Beersheva attacks.
”The Israeli threats against Syria are not based on any evidence and are completely lacking in credibility,” he said in comments carried by the official Sana news agency.
”[Such menaces] raise tensions in the region,” Shara said.
The attacks in Beersheva were the deadliest since a suicide bombing in the port city of Haifa last October, which left 21 people and the female bomber dead, and followed a period of relative calm.
Israel responded to that attack, carried out by the smaller Islamic Jihad organisation, with an air strike on an alleged Palestinian militant training camp deep inside Syria.
Meshaal was the target of a failed assassination bid by Israeli agents in Jordan in 1997. He emerged as undisputed leader earlier this year after Hamas co-founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdelaziz Rantissi, were both killed in Israeli air strikes.
As well as the threats of military action, Israeli diplomats are stepping up their efforts to convince other governments of Damascus’s ties to Hamas.
Danny Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, is to present Bush administration officials with intelligence information on the links while Shalom is expected to press the same message at talks with Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency.
While officials were setting their sights on Damascus, the army also launched attacks in Hamas’s traditional Gaza Strip stronghold.
One Palestinian was killed and 13 others injured during an incursion by troops into the Deir Al-Balah area of central Gaza.
At least four Palestinians were also wounded late on Wednesday when Israel helicopter gunships opened fire in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis during an army incursion.
Hunger strike halted
Meanwhile, a hunger strike launched by Palestinian prisoners nearly three weeks ago in protest at their conditions in Israeli jails was halted.
The vast majority of prisoners had already suspended the protest, which was launched on August 15, before 600 inmates at the southern Beersheva prison also decided on to start eating again on Thursday.
Issa Qaraqea, head of the Palestinian prisoners’ club, said the decision to halt the protest was made after the prison authorities promised to satisfy some of their demands.
However, prison service spokesperson Ian Domnitz insisted that ”we have not promised to fulfil any demands whatsoever”. — Sapa-AFP