Syria fires on Israeli war planes
Pastor Dale Morgan
Syria fires on Israeli war planes*
DAMASCUS (AFP) - - Syria said its air defences opened fire on Israeli
warplanes which had violated Syrian airspace at dawn on Thursday,
ratcheting up the tension between the neighbouring foes.
A Syrian cabinet minister warned that the nation's leadership was
considering its response to the Israeli "aggression" while in Israel the
military declined any comment.
"Enemy Israeli planes penetrated Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean
Sea heading towards the northeast, breaking the sound barrier," a Syrian
army spokesman told the official SANA news agency.
"Our air defences repulsed them and forced them to leave... after the
Israeli planes dropped munitions, without causing human or material
loss," he said, without giving further information on what exactly was
dropped.
Syria's allegations came amid a war of words with Israel, with each
blaming the other for stoking regional tensions and for the failure to
revive peace talks that have been stalled for seven years.
Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told pan-Arab satellite television
Al-Jazeera that Syria's leadership was "giving serious consideration to
its response... to this aggression."
In Israel, the military refused to comment on Syria's claims, saying:
"We do not comment on such reports."
Former major general Uzi Dayan said the military's silence was an
indication of Israel's eagerness not to allow the incident to stoke
tensions with Syria.
"Israel is active on many fronts in the Middle East but we have no
intention to bring about a deterioration in the situation. That is why
the Israeli reaction was so short and restrained," he told private
Channel Two television.
The United States also declined any formal comment.
But a State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity said:
"I don't think anybody here is viewing this with any particular or
unique concern."
A Syrian minister admitted to Al-Jazeera's English-language channel that
it remained unclear whether the Israeli aircraft had actually carried
out an attack.
"They intervened in our airspace... which they should not do -- we are a
sovereign country and they should not come into airspace," Expatriate
Affairs Minister Bussaina Shaaban said.
"We do not know yet" if the aircraft dropped anything. "The
investigation is still going on on the ground," she said.
In June 2006, Israeli warplanes flew over President Bashar al-Assad's
palace in northern Syria while he was inside, an action Damascus
condemned as an "act of piracy."
Over the past few months, Israeli and Syrian leaders have both said
their countries do not want a war, but were preparing for any
possibility while each side has accused the other of arming for a conflict.
Syria and Israel remain technically at a state of war, and peace talks
broke down in 2000 over the fate of the Golan Heights, the strategic
plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed in 1981.
The last overflight by Israel in 2006 came amid high tensions in the
Middle East after the Jewish state launched a massive military offensive
on the Gaza Strip to try to retrieve a soldier captured by Palestinian
militants.
The Gaza action was followed just a few weeks later by a devastating
Israeli war in Lebanon against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah militia,
after two soldiers were captured in a raid by the guerrillas.
Syria shelters a number of radical Palestinian groups, and is home to
Khaled Meshaal, the exiled supremo of the Islamic Resistance Movement
(Hamas) who tops Israel's most wanted list.
Last month, Israel said it was reducing its military presence on the
Golan Heights and lowering its level of alert.
However, it said it will continue to conduct regular training on the
plateau as part of its training following the Lebanon war against
Hezbollah, which revealed major shortcomings in the army's conduct.
And Israel continues to carry out occasional flights over neighbouring
Lebanon, triggering protests from Beirut and concern from the United
Nations peacekeeping force monitoring a ceasefire there.
Thursday's action comes exactly a month to the day before the
anniversary of the October 1973 war.
On October 6 of that year, Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks on
Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, to recover
territory lost in the 1967 Middle East war, although they were again
defeated.