Posted on 08/17/2006 6:41:45 PM PDT by blam
Syrians demand military action to reclaim Golan Heights
By Patrick Bishop in Beirut
(Filed: 18/08/2006)
Bashar al-Assad praised Hizbollah's 'victory'
Pressure is mounting on Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to follow Hizbollah's example and consider force to eject Israel from Syrian land that it has occupied for nearly 40 years.
The public appetite for action is just one of the uncomfortable consequences regional rulers are facing, as Arabs compare their leaders' performances over Israel with the Lebanese "resistance".
Mr Assad, who supports Hizbollah, was quick to praise the militia's "victory" in a post-conflict speech and to bathe in its reflected glory.
Their deeds, he said, had "shattered the myth of an invincible army". But his rhetoric has turned public attention once again to the problem of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1981.
"There is anger and daily demands by ordinary people to open this front," said Mohammed Habash, a leading Muslim moderate and member of the Syrian parliament, talking on the al-Arabiya television channel.
He proposed peace negotiations with a strict deadline of a year. If these failed, he said, the Syrians should "try to do what the Lebanese did in their own country".
An official government newspaper, al-Thawra, warned Israel this week that Syrians "will not allow our land to be occupied forever... you must understand that our people will fight the way the Lebanese resistance fought you".
But the idea of Mr Assad going to war with his massively more powerful neighbour has met with laughter in the Arab world. His father, Hafez al-Assad, liked to be known as the "Lion of Damascus". His son is considered to be mousy by comparison, particularly in pro-western Arab countries, whose leaders he attacked in his speech as "half-men in favour of half-solutions".
Jordan's al-Ghad newspaper remarked that "the Syrian president spoke as if he had just returned from the front line". The Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat said that, since the loss of the Golan Heights, Syria "has not fired a single shot" at Israel.
Mr Assad's scramble to share Hizbollah's prestige reflects the standing that the organisation has won in 33 days of fighting. Arab nations had an unbroken record of defeat and humiliation at the hands of Israel, and what was no more than a successful defensive action has acquired the lustre of a great success.
Posters have appeared in Beirut showing the Hizbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and lorries mounted with Katyusha rockets alongside the words "The Divine Victory", written in English.
Saad Hariri, the leader of the biggest anti-Syria block in the Lebanese parliament, accused Damascus of exploiting the bloodshed and insisted that "the resistance is a product of [all] Lebanon". Meanwhile, Hizbollah has won praise from unlikely quarters. The liberal English language Daily Star newspaper carried a front-page editorial yesterday entitled: "Love it or hate it, Hizbollah has lessons for all Arabs."
Let's hope that the Syrians are actually serious about this.
Posts such as that crack me up........
eXCELLANT, ARTICULATE POST!!!!!
i say we kick there ass take names and have a beer while doing it (:.
Really if you think about it, why should they wear uniforms and follow the Laws of Land Warfare?
We (and Israel) are already giving captured terrorists all the privileges of POWs - privileges that are only guaranteed to uniformed soldiers of a legitimate army answerable to a national government. Our enemies would gain no extra benefit from wearing uniforms because they are getting all of the benefits already, for nothing!
If we really wanted to make them wear uniforms, we'd be shooting them as spies at time of capture. Of course that would not be Pee Cee...instead it's 3 hots and a cot. You get to rest up until some liberal lawyer brings a lawsuit to get you released - and then it's back to killing infidels again.
Under those circumstances, who WOULD wear a uniform, especially when the Geneva Conv. and the rest of the Laws of War are foolish infidel concepts that you don't care about?
Oh please...they will never feel the full force of a modern military.
Gulf War 1 was (mark my words) the very LAST attempt of an Arab nation to fight a modern military in conventional warfare. After the Highway of Death, they will NEVER try it again. They learned their lesson from GW1 and have been practicing guerrilla tactics ever since.
From here on out no Arab nation will ever field any uniformed force against us. Everyone we kill will be in civvies, and the media will lap it up.
You are right on the money. That's the issue I saw when the ruling came down that the Gitmo prisoners were entitled to all the benefits of U.S. Citizens and legitimate "armies" (as opposed to the cutesy "enemy combatatants" phraseology used). We can't even call them Terrorists in the MSM!
There is so much give-away to non-qualified people by the U.S. from the Liberals and Pee Cee crowd (look at the illegal alien problems, and you see the same situation---freebies for NON-eligible people).
make that enemy "combatants"....I type too slow.
you know sometimes i really wonder about the American People.
Did anyone build the neutron bomb that was proposed in the 80's?
That should have occurred on 9/12/01.
What type of guerrilla tactics will Syria us to push Israel out of it's fixed positions on the Golan Heights?
My thoughts exactly...that this was pre-planned...pieces falling into place.
Olmert aside, this is the kind of war the IDF wants to fight. Armor vs armor, air force v air force. Syria and Assad should be very careful how they interpret what happened in Lebanon. It doesn't replicate if Syrian forces try to seize the Golan. If they try, Hezbollah may be the only serious Arab military left in the region, once the shooting stops.
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