Israel Threatens Syria With War

Syria's president Bashir Assad in a meeting with Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos made the statement that Israel was 'not serious' about peace talks and was 'pushing the region toward war'.

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The statements are uncontroversial and evident. Israel is not serious about peace talks either with Syria or the Palestinians. For two years, the Turkish government mediated between Syria and Israel to no avail not due to Syria's lack of eagerness (Assad even sent then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert a goodwill bucket of hummus), but because Israel is not ready to give up the Golan Heights - Syrian territory Israel occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. Syria's conditions are obvious: land-for-peace. No different then the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty that saw Egypt recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdraw from the Sinai, also occupied in the '67 War. The Golan Heights are not of religious importance to the Jewish people, and the only illegal Israeli settlements there are minimal and based on economic considerations and not a sense of divine entitlement. In others words: removing these settlements would be inexpensive and the settlers would not put up a fight unlike the militant ones on the occupied West Bank. The Golan is also a small piece of territory, not strategically important (it is a high land mass, but such considerations are null in the age of rockets and fighter jets), it is not considered in Israeli calculations of so-called 'defensible borders' and many Israelis reckon that eventually they'll have to end their reign over it. Do that and Syria will sign a peace deal. But Israel has refused something so easy and obvious and the benefits to outweighing, because of its lack of commitment toward regional peace.

As for the Palestinians, months of President Obama pressure for a settlement freeze has brought only an Israeli guarantee for a 10-month 'freeze' (after which building will eagerly resume) and even this is hollow: occupied Arab East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians desire as their future capital, will be excluded because Israel states that all of Jerusalem is Israeli territory and a new neighborhood is being build as I write; 3,000 housing units already under construction will be completed, and anything deemed vital - schools, government offices, synagogues, ect... - will be exempt from the so-called 'freeze'. And did I mention that Israel could only bear this 'freeze' to last 10-months and will build even more in just a few months? Netanyahu has shown his contempt for President Obama and peace by personally planting a symbolic tree in an illegal settlement. Israelis claim that they want to return to negotiations, but Palestinians have been here before during Oslo: while they talk, Israel colonizes more and more of Palestinian land while Israel disingenuously claims it is negotiating in good faith while it undermines the dwindling chances of a two-state solution it claims it is seeking through a futile 'peace process'. What is the point of negotiating if your opponent uses the cover of such a process to undermine the very end your devoting time to securing? Israel is not serious about peace in either regard, indeed.

As for Assad's second point: Israel 'pushing the region to war'. Since 2006, Israel has fought a war with Lebanon, bombed Syria, fought a war with Gaza and bombed Sudan. In the process, it has killed thousands of innocent Arabs. But Assad was not even referring to this bloody record, but speaking in the future tense. He is referring to Israel's unceasing campaign to promote a U.S. military confrontation against Iran. It is not question of merit - whether one things a war with Iran is good or bad - but simply a statement of fact that Israel is 'pushing the region to war'. Israel wants America to bomb Iran on its behalf, and if Obama does not then Israel will bomb Iran itself most likely this year. Israelis have stated that they cannot accept a nuclear Iran, which they view as an existential threat, and that 2010 is the decisive year. Israel will bomb Iran or get America to do so in a unilateral or joint operation. That will lead to Iranian retaliation and regional war; just a simple statement of fact. Thus, merit aside, Israel is in fact 'pushing the region to war'; just a simple statement of fact.

Considering that Israel is unenthusiastic, at best, toward peace deals and thinks an attack against Iran a good thing, you'd expect they'd take no issue or at least do nothing more than issue the obligatory Israeli diplomatic lying rhetoric that Israel 'wants peace' and 'a diplomatic solution' toward Iran; but this is the age of Lieberman and a more chauvinistic and fascistic Israeli politics:

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that he’ll lose the war and his grip on power if his country picks a fight with Israel.

“Assad needs to know that if he provokes Israel, he will fall from power,” Lieberman said today at a conference near Tel Aviv, in comments conveyed by his spokesman Tzachi Moshe. “I hope the message will be well understood in Damascus.”

Who's threaten whom? Syria makes a critique and Israel's thuggish, fascist, racist and belligerent-Kahane-lover foreign minister in return threatens to topple the regime. And he's lecturing Syria on its prose and conduct, and saying that it is the one picking a war by criticizing Israel? The temerity is incredible.

And under Israel's perversely self-righteous and militarist logic, a simple and disciplined statement of fact (which Israel is free to dispute, of course) said in a casual demeanor in no way implying hostile intent (which Syria lacks, anyway) constitutes a Syrian threat of war against Israel; but when Israel earlier this year violated Syrian airspace and flew its fighter jets over the summer residence of the Syrian president in an deliberately provocative act intending to humiliate the Syrians by blatantly showing off Israeli military power and impunity and Syrian impotence against such an offense and violation of sovereignty - that is what?, I may ask, not hostile intent no doubt, but, what?, a return thanks for the hummus? Of course, Israel is never guilty of aggression. I mean, it is such an innocent and beleaguered underdog in the region which just happens to be the strongest military power with nuclear weaponry and unconditional backing by the world's sole superpower. And it bombs Syria and violates its territory, but, no, believe the Zionist propaganda that it is those 'savage' Arabs and Muslims whom are aggressors.

Syrian criticism, which is no different that rhetoric voiced in European circles, is provoking war, but Israeli violations of airspace and petty and self-defeating taunts alongside threats of regime-topple are supposedly innocent - do not be surprised if the U.S. Congress now passes a resolution under this title and condemn Syria for its 'rogue' and 'war-like rhetoric' and then praises Israeli 'self-defense'.

But in the end, Israel will regret every last bit of its crimes and its offending and hubris rhetoric.