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Topic: Syria puts armed forces on alert!
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Trafield
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Isaiah 17:1-14
1The oracle concerning Damascus.
“Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city
And will become a fallen ruin.
2“The cities of Aroer are forsaken;
They will be for flocks to lie down in,
And there will be no one to frighten them.
3“The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
And sovereignty from Damascus
And the remnant of Aram;
They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel,”
Declares the Lord of hosts.
4Now in that day the glory of Jacob will fade,
And the fatness of his flesh will become lean.
5It will be even like the reaper gathering the standing grain,
As his arm harvests the ears,
Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain
In the valley of Rephaim.
6Yet gleanings will be left in it like the shaking of an olive tree,
Two or three olives on the topmost bough,
Four or five on the branches of a fruitful tree,
Declares the Lord, the God of Israel.
7In that day man will have regard for his Maker
And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel.
8He will not have regard for the altars, the work of his hands,
Nor will he look to that which his fingers have made,
Even the Asherim and incense stands.
9In that day their strong cities will be like forsaken places in the forest,
Or like branches which they abandoned before the sons of Israel;
And the land will be a desolation.
10For you have forgotten the God of your salvation
And have not remembered the rock of your refuge.
Therefore you plant delightful plants
And set them with vine slips of a strange god.
11In the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in,
And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom;
But the harvest will be a heap
In a day of sickliness and incurable pain.
12Alas, the uproar of many peoples
Who roar like the roaring of the seas,
And the rumbling of nations
Who rush on like the rumbling of mighty waters!
13The nations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters,
But He will rebuke them and they will flee far away,
And be chased like chaff in the mountains before the wind,
Or like whirling dust before a gale.
14At evening time, behold, there is terror!
Before morning they are no more.
Such will be the portion of those who plunder us
And the lot of those who pillage us.
Dec. 4, 2003
Syria puts armed forces on alert
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1070512328089
Syria's Ambassador to the United Nations, Fayssal Mekdad refuted allegations Thursday that terrorists caught on their way to bombing a school in the north of Israel were sent by Syria.
"These lies are simply a pretext for attacking Damascus," which – he said – is actively seeking peace.
A top Syrian official says Israel has attached too many conditions to restart peace talks and hopes Israelis will "come to their senses" and negotiate a settlement.
"Syria is committed to peace," ambassador Mekdad, told the Associated Press on Thursday, blaming the Israeli government led by Ariel Sharon for the lack of progress.
On Thursday, Israeli intelligence informed the government that Syrian President Bashar Assad has ordered his armed forces to prepare for an Israeli military strike, defense sources said.
The Syrian air force has also raised its level of alert and has been maintaining patrol flights by fighter jets along the border with Israel in anticipation of another Israeli air strike, the sources confirmed.
"This has nothing to do with our intentions, but rather with assessments we have received regarding the perceptions being held by the Syrians about what we may do," said a senior defense official.
Earlier Thursday, a senior IDF officer said that the military would certainly have urged striking at targets in Syria had the foiled suicide bombing targeting a school in Yokne'am succeed in killing children.
"This could have created a situation that would have justified another strike against Syria," the senior officer told military reporters. "This attack was aimed at halting peace initiatives and caused us to take extreme reactions."
The source confirmed that the orders for the attempted suicide bombing came from Islamic Jihad headquarters, who, he noted, are operating freely in Damascus.
Israel last attacked Syrian terrorist bases following the attack on the Maxim restaurant outside Haifa, in which 21 people were murdered in October. Following the attack, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara warned that if Israel attacks Syrian soil again, Syrian public opinion would demand retaliation, and the government would have no choice but to follow.
IAF F-16s bombed an empty Palestinian training base near Damascus on October 5 in retaliation for the suicide bombing of the Maxim restaurant in Haifa that killed 21 people.
Still stunned from the first air strike on Syrian soil since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, another squadron of F-16s crisscrossed Lebanon two weeks ago, flying over Beirut and buzzing the skies over Syrian troops stationed in the northern and eastern part of the country. IAF jets have also buzzed Assad at his palace.
Senior IDF commanders gloated in private as they watched the humiliated Syrians, mocked throughout the Arab world for their apparent impotence to stop the Israeli military.
Senior Syrian officials have warned that Assad's regime could not countenance another Israeli strike on its soil. Syria's Foreign Minister Farouk Al Shara said after the October 5 IAF air strike that his country would attack villages on the Golan Heights.
"If we are attacked again the people will not stand for it, and we will have to carry out the will of the people," he said. "We have many cards that have not been played. Don't forget there are many Israeli settlements in the Golan."
The military maneuvering and rhetoric came as Assad appeared to seek renewing peace talks with Israel. After Israel snubbed his informal proposal made in a newspaper interview, Assad accused Jerusalem of creating tensions by its "policies of escalation and extremism."
Damascus believes that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is determined to attack Syria for domestic political reasons, according to The London-based Jane's Defense Weekly, believing he has backing from the pro-Israeli Bush administration.
Syrian-Israeli peace talks ended in March 2000. At the time Israel was offering to return virtually all of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau it seized from Syria in the 1967 war. But then-Israeli Premier Ehud Barak and the late Syrian president Hafez Assad could not agree on the final details.
This week, Bashar Assad, raised anew the possibility of an agreement, telling the New York Times there were no preconditions for restarting talks. But the Times also quoted him as saying talks should begin where they left off in 2000, an offer he has made previously.
Israel brushed off signs that Damascus is ready to resume peace talks, saying Syria continues to back militant groups like Islamic Jihad which it accused of planning a suicide bombing attempt on a vocational high school before the would-be bombers were arrested on Wednesday.
Mekdad said Assad had "reemphasized this Syrian strategy option to go to negotiations with Israel, to continue those negotiations that have achieved almost 80 percent of potential agreement."
"But frankly speaking, Israel has a lot of conditions," the Syrian ambassador said.
"It is regrettable that this government, which we have always said is a military government, did not grasp this chance to change its mind, to change its policies, and to come forth to achieve a just and comprehensive peace," he said.
"They are making very difficult conditions for the peace process to resume and they must be responsible for such decisions," Mekdad said.
"We hope that they ... come to their senses and think for a while. ... They cannot solve the problem by military might, by military attacks against Syria, or against Lebanon or against the Palestinians who are suffering," he said.
Assad's reported overtures have been greeted with widespread skepticism in Israel.
A senior Western diplomat told The Associated Press in Jerusalem that the Syrian president has agreed to a proposal to halt violence along Israel's northern border and subsequently restart negotiations on a comprehensive peace agreement if Israel promises to end flights over Lebanon and not attack its territory.
The Syrian Amb. said he could not confirm the proposal. "I'm not aware of these things," he said.
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