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Serious Escalation: Israeli Jets Conduct Syria Airstrike

Jan. 30, 2013 3:22pm Madeleine Morgenstern

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel conducted a rare airstrike on a military target inside Syria near the border with Lebanon, foreign officials and Syrian state TV said Wednesday, amid fears President Bashar Assad’s regime could provide powerful weapons to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.

Regional security officials said Israel had been planning in the days leading up to the airstrike to hit a shipment of weapons bound for Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful military force and a sworn enemy of the Jewish state. Among Israeli officials’ chief fears is that Assad will pass chemical weapons or sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah – something that could change the balance of power in the region and greatly hinder Israel’s ability to conduct air sorties in Lebanon.

The regional officials said the shipment Israel was planning to strike included Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically “game-changing” in the hands of Hezbollah by enabling the group to carry out fiercer attacks on Israel and shoot down Israeli jets, helicopters and surveillance drones. A U.S. official said the strike hit a convoy of trucks but did not give an exact location.

The Syrian military confirmed the strike in a statement read aloud on state TV, but it said the jets bombed a military research center in the area of Jamraya, northwest of the capital, Damascus, and about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the border with Lebanon.

The statement said the center was responsible for “raising the level of resistance and self-defense” of Syria’s military. It said the strike destroyed the center and a nearby building, killing two workers and wounding five others.

The Syrian army statement denied that the strike had targeted a convoy headed from Syria to Lebanon, instead portraying the strike as linked to the civil war pitting Assad’s forces against rebels seeking to push him from power.

“This proves that Israel is the instigator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts targeting Syria and its people,” the statement said.

The Israeli military declined to comment, and the location could not be independently confirmed because of reporting restrictions in Syria.

Hezbollah has committed to Israel’s destruction and has gone to war against the Jewish state in the past. Syria has long been among the militant group’s most significant backers and is suspected of supplying with funding and arms, as well as a land corridor to Iran.

This strike also comes as Syria is enmeshed in a civil war. The rebels have seized a large swath of territory in the country’s north and established footholds in a number of Damascus suburbs, though Assad’s forces still control the city and much of the rest of the country.

While Assad’s fall does not appear imminent, analysts worry he could grow desperate as his power wanes and seek to cause trouble elsewhere in the region through proxy groups like Hezbollah.

Syria’s government portrays the crisis, which started with political protest in 2011 and has since become a civil war, as a foreign-backed conspiracy meant to destroy the country.

Top Israeli officials have recently expressed worries that Assad’s regime could pass chemical weapons to Hezbollah or other militant groups.

President Barack Obama has called Syria’s use of chemical weapons a “red line” whose crossing could prompt a tougher U.S. response, but U.S. officials say they are tracking Syria’s chemical weapons and that they still appear to be under regime control.

The strike, carried out either late Tuesday or early Wednesday, appears to be the latest move in a long running race by Hezbollah to increase its military power while Israel seeks to limit it.

Israel suspects that Damascus obtained a battery of SA-17s from Russia after an alleged Israeli airstrike in 2007 that destroyed an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor.

Earlier this week, Israel moved a battery of its new “Iron Dome” rocket defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was battered by Hezbollah rocket fire in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The Israeli army called that move “routine.”

The airstrike was the first inside Syria in more than five years. In September 2007, Israeli warplanes destroyed a site in Syria that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed likely to be a secretly built nuclear reactor. Syria has denied the claim, saying the building was a non-nuclear military site.

Syria allowed international inspectors to visit the bombed site in 2008 but it has refused to allow nuclear inspectors new access. This has heightened suspicions that Syria has something to hide, along with its decision to level the destroyed structure and later build over it.

Israeli warplanes flew over Assad’s palace in 2006 after Syrian-backed militants in Gaza captured an Israeli soldier.

And in 2003, Israeli warplanes attacked a suspected militant training camp just north of the Syrian capital, in response to an Islamic JIhad suicide bombing in the city of Haifa that killed 21 Israelis.

Syria vowed to retaliate for both attacks, but never did.

The military in Lebanon, which also shares a border with Israel, said Wednesday that Israeli warplanes have sharply increased their activity over Lebanon in the past week, including at least 12 sorties in less than 24 hours in the country’s south.

A senior Lebanese security official said no Israeli airstrikes occurred inside Lebanese territory. Asked whether it could have been along the border on the Syrian side, he said that that could not be confirmed as it was out of his area of operations.

A Lebanese army statement said the last of the sorties took place at 2 a.m. local time Wednesday. It said four warplanes which flew in over the southernmost coastal town of Naqoura and hovered for several hours over villages in southern Lebanon before leaving Lebanese airspace.

It said eight other warplanes conducted similar flights on Tuesday.

Another Lebanese security official said the flights were part of “increased activity” in the past week but did not elaborate. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the strike.

The U.N. Agency tasked with monitoring the Lebanon-Israeli border said in a statement Wednesday it had no information on any strikes near the Syria-Lebanon border. It did note, however, a “high number of Israeli overflights” on Tuesday.

“These air violations have continued on an almost daily basis,” it said.

The area of Lebanon where the flights took place borders southern Syria.

Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace are not uncommon and Lebanese authorities routinely lodge complaints at the U.N. against the flights.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war, and Syria demands the area back as part of any peace deal. Despite hostility between the two countries, Syria has been careful to keep the border quiet since the 1973 Mideast war and has never retaliated to Israeli attacks since.

In May 2011, only two months after the uprising against Assad started, hundreds of Palestinians overran the tightly controlled Syria-Israeli frontier in a move widely thought to have been facilitated by the Assad regime, to divert the world’s gaze from his growing troubles at home.

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Comments (89)

waspanglosaxon
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 3:30am
And so Israel wantonly attacks another non-aggressive country. Of course, it doesn’t really matter, as no Israelis will have to do much, should push really come to shove. They’ll just snap their fingers and their puppets in ZOG will send in hordes of the ‘dumb goyim’ soldiers to fight Israel’s battles, as always happens.

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media-bias-steals-elections
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 7:28pm
I will pray for the brave men and women, standing up to the religion of Islam and its use of force, especially the ones who make possible the acts of President Obama, firing missiles through the use of drones in foreign countries, just like Israel is being forced to do, after people have articulated the threat to innocent people planned by militants of Islam?

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trueamerican40
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:33pm
Psst…Sheihk O is arming the Muslim Brotherhood (also known as the Islamic Front which includes Al Queda, Hezbollah, Hamas, hell–they’re all united and funded by the head of the Serpent Iran) to attack the Jewish homeland. I say to Bibi, “Seek and destroy the wicked descendents of Esau…burn their lands and don’t look back at them!”

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Southernsoul
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:23pm
I could see before our elections, that Israel was perhaps waiting to see if we would elect a President that would back them. Now they know that answer. Why don’t they stop playing around and wipe those troglodytes off the face of the earth. This time don’t give the land back, it won’t buy you anything.

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The Big Mick
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:17pm
Soybean–oh come ON, you’re going to have to unpack THAT with some cogency.
The CSA WAS destroyed, they did NOT destroy. THEY were the VICTIMS.
Turkey DESTROYED Armenia, marched em thru the desert to DIE. How are the Armenians the Destroyers? How did either The North or Turkey suffer for either of those Foul Tyrannical Deeds?
Imperial Japan and the 3rd Reich did seek to destroy and were destroyed. That’s EXACTLY my POINT–Sandyknickers=Nazis. Are you arguing it worked out badly for the ALLIES who Sought to Destroy them? How did Destroying Carthage work out badly for Rome?
Barbarians SHOULD be wiped out. What ends very badly for FREE people is to NOT utterly wipe out the Barbarians.
Sandyknickers=Barbarians.

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- soybomb315
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:42pm
  did you see what happend with vietnam, korea, iraq, and afganistan (after the first month)…..Seems like we are the barbarians
  
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The Big Mick
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:11pm
Barb–you were successful. It was a nice bit of Sarcasim and Irony. Didn’t mean to be pendantic.

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PIGSWILLNEVERFLY
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:00pm
Report has changed. It is now said that the IAF hit an arms depot near Damascus. http://www.debka.com
Israel has not commented.

G-d Bless the Israelis, they are fighting for us all since we have a traitor muslim -0 pResident.

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The Big Mick
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 4:50pm
SoyBean.
“can’t kill an idea”?
Hmmm, ask the Armenians. Cartheginians. Confederate States of America. The 3rd Reich.
Imperial Japan.
CULTURES CAN be Utterly Destroyed.
Indeed, if you knew your History, that’s what the Whole Islamist Hegemony thing has been about since the 7th Century. They went a good ways to depopulating and enslaving the entire Med basin.
The “Crusades” were a COUNTER ATTACK to a WORLD WIDE Sandyknicker INVASION.
THEY started the whole thing, THEY still intend a World Wide Islamic Caliphate Hegemony.
And like Imperial Japan and the 3rd Reich they need to be utterly wiped out.

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- soybomb315
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:04pm
  and every example you just listed had profound consequences that ended very badly for the ones trying to destroy
  
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Ghandi was a Republican
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 4:50pm
Test their defenses and response capabilities. Iran next. Stage a few mock raids and then hit Tehran with a nuke. Anyone left in Tehran will have had plenty of warning. THEY DECLARED WAR ON YOU ISRAEL. Many times over many decades. It’s time to appease them..
Use nukes for peace, before they must be used for war!

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The Big Mick
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 4:44pm
I wonder how EnciMom felt about the Branch Davidians whose babies were burned at Waco? About that Polygamist Mormon Sect? How would she feel about a bunch of West Va. Snakehandlers who beat their women, executed their teenage girls, and burned the NewspaperOffice for Anti-snake handling cartoons?
Is it the Patriarchal Dark Age Barbarian BEHAVIORS that are the significant thing, or is it that the Sandyknickered RagaMuzzies AIN’T “WHITE”?
Hows she feel about the Amish Mafia doing “Honor Killings” and launching rockets at Catholic Churches?

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The Big Mick
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 4:38pm
I agree with SoyB. It IS an Act of War, a War to Extermination and for Survival against a Dark Age Patriarchal Barbarian KLAN culture that enslaves and abuses women, executes teenage girls, beheads cartoonists and in general acts like a bunch of Sandyknickerd Sheites who have NO PLACE in the 21st Century.
The RagaMuzzied JihadiNAZIS are WORSE than the Imperial Japs or the Third Reich and the solution is the same. Kill as close to all of them as makes no difference until the Entire CULTURE is utterly DESTROYED.

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- barber2
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 4:46pm
  I’m with you, but I question the use of the word ” culture.”
  
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- The Big Mick
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 4:52pm
  Bar.
  To BE a “culture” is not to BE “cultured”.
  Barbarism is a culture, just not a very “cultured” one.
  
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- barber2
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:05pm
  BIG: I was attempting humor..but, apparently, not successfully !
  
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- The Big Mick
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:18pm
  sorry Barb it WAS a nice bit of Sarcasm/Irony, you were successful, didn’t mean to be pendantic.
  
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- OldSurfRat
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:25pm
  The Sharif don’t like it
  Rockin’ the Casbah
  Rockin’ the Casbah
  
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- AUsername
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:25pm
  since syria actually has attacked Israel before and there is no agreement of any kind, i suppose it was understandable and everything will be fine if Israel fights this battle on there own otherwise if they get USA involved we better boycott the living daylights out of them, Iraq was bad enough.
  
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- tzion
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:49pm
  @Auser
  That’s probably one of the most sensible things you’ve ever said. Indeed, no peace treaty was ever signed after Syria attack Israel on three separate occasions, has continued to arm terrorists for the purpose of attacking Israel, and has even allowed shelling from the recent civil conflict to hit inside of Israel. This is more a resumption of hostilities than the beginning of them.
  
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- johnpaulkuchtajr
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 5:54pm
  I hope that BiBi manages to slay all of our Sewer Rat-in-Chief’s buddies who Obama supplied with all sorts of nifty toys from Gadhafi’s arsenals.
  
  It’s not against the law to wish that BiBi destroys all of Obama’s Syrian buddies, is it?
  
  “Remember Benghazi and all the Traitors!”
  
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- pragmaticpatriot
  Posted on January 30, 2013 at 10:27pm
  culture as in a disease. islam in humans is like rabies in dogs
  
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KidCharlemagne
Posted on January 30, 2013 at 4:36pm
Al-Qaeda must be a little slow to bring about ‘regime change’ for Netanyahu’s timetable:

—————————————–
Haaretz.com (Sep. 2, 2012): “Al-Qaida threatens Hezbollah over its support of the Syrian regime”

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