Free bus trip to Golan in support of Assad and Hizballah

Intent on extending their day trip  from Syria into Israel

President Bashar Assad had more than one objective in bussing thousands of demonstrators to Israel's Golan border Nakba Day, Sun. May 15. Showing how easily he and his Hizballah partner could capture a village on the Israeli side of the enclave was only one. The other was to put a spoke in Egypt's wheel for transferring Hamas' command centers from Damascus to the Gaza Strip as part of its moves for taking the Gaza Strip and its Hamas rulers under Cairo's wing against Israel.

In the light of this contest, the case for renewing peace talks with the Palestinians, argued interminably between Israel's government and opposition leaders (despite the Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas's two-year refusal) has lost its relevance. The rejectionist Syria, Hizballah and Hamas are now calling the Palestinian shots..

“The Syrian regime is intentionally attempting to divert international attention away from the brutal crackdown of their own citizens to incite against Israel,” said Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman.

Israel’s military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, told Channel 2 TV he also saw “fingerprints of Iranian provocation and an attempt to use ‘nakba day’ to create conflict.”

Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV was in place to film much of the day’s clashes, and defense officials said the activists were bused in from Palestinian refugee camps throughout Syria. Many of them held European passports and told interrogators they had been flown in from abroad for the march.

“It’s our land,” one of the infiltrators, Sufian Abdel Hamid, told Israel’s Channel 2 TV. “We won’t stop trying to come back.”

Israel unhappy at orchestrated invasion

An explosion of unrest along the border could play into the hands of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has faced two months of popular protests against political repression and rights abuses in his country. The uprising, in which human rights groups say more than 800 people have been killed, is the most serious challenge to the Assad family’s 40-year dynasty.

Assad has cast himself as the only person who can bring stability to Syria — a country with a volatile mixture of religions and sects, and with a hostile neighbour in Israel.

Assad threatens Israel with war

Egypt's military rulers promised Hamas' political leader Khaled Meshaal to let him transfer his base, command center and residence from troubled Damascus to a new haven in the Gaza Strip as an inducement for signing the Palestinian unity agreement with Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah on May 4. This is disclosed for the first time by intelligence sources.

Rami Makhlouf 

In Damascus, Bashar Assad's close confidante Rami Makhlouf threatened that Syria would go to war against Israel in reprisal for US and Europe backing for the uprising.

Makhlouf, an international business tycoon, is on the US and EU sanctions lists. In an interview with the New York Times Wednesday, May 11, he said: "If there is no stability here, there's no way there will be stability in Israel. No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime."

He advised the US and Europe not to "put a lot of pressure on the president, don't push Syria to do anything it is not happy to do."

The Syrian president is examining two strategic options, he said: "Going to war against Israel, and/or sending weapons shipments to the West Bank and to Israeli Arabs for use in terrorist attacks against Israel.

Military sources note that Makhlouf, who is a cousin of Bashar Assad, built up his fortune from smuggling Saddam Hussein's underground fighters, weapons and funds from their havens in Syria to Iraq, as well as al Qaeda combatants and leaders to fight Americans into the wartorn country. He therefore has excellent connections with terrorist networks and is very familiar with their requirements for pursuing suicide bombing campaigns.

The tycoon would not have made his remarks to the NYT without the Syrian president's nod. So they may be safely interpreted as a declaration that the Assad regime is holding Israel hostage for its survival against the groundswell of popular disaffection shaking it for more than two months.

Fatah and Hamas sign reconciliation deal

The fox and the scorpion shake hands.

You may recall the story:

The fox and the scorpion stand on the banks of the river Jordan looking into Israel.

The scorpion says to the fox, "If I hop on your back, we can swim over and conquer the Israelis."

The fox looked at the scorpion incredulously and said, "You must be joking. One bite from you and I would be dead."

"That I wouldn't do." replied the scorpion, "Then we both would die".

"True", thought the fox. "OK - hop on". And they plunged into the water.

About halfway over, the scorpion bit the fox.

"Why did you do that?" exclaimed the fox in his dying breath.

The scorpion replied, as the waters swallowed them both up, "It's the middle east, my friend, it's the middle east..."