http://www.aljazeerah.info/6%200/Sharon%20on%20the%20Rampage.htmArab News 6 October 2003
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No one doubted that there would be Israeli reprisals after Saturday’s suicide bomb attack in Haifa. But no one in their wildest dreams imagined that the target would be Syria.
Why Syria? For all its hard-line rhetoric against Israel, there has not been a shot fired across the makeshift frontier on the Golan Heights for years. If the Israelis were seriously interested in hitting Islamic Jihad, they could have done so far more effectively in the Gaza Strip or with a strike on one of its bases in Lebanon. Yet they chose a target deep in Syrian territory even though both the Syrians and Islamic Jihad deny there are any bases there.
This was no message to Islamic Jihad. It was a cold, unambiguous threat to Syria: Either jump to Israel’s diktats or else. There can be no question about it. Immediately after the strike, the Israelis then warned Syria there would be more if it did not close down so-called terrorist organizations.
An inevitable conclusion must be that the Israelis were acting on behalf of the US; it is difficult to believe that that they would have struck without the green light from Washington. We know that the Americans have loudly accused Syria of supporting terrorism and warned it to stop. Damascus is further seen by the Americans as a problem in Iraq, providing support to officials of the former regime and allowing Syrian volunteers to cross the border and join in attacks on US troops. The notion that Washington used the Israelis to threaten the Syrians into line makes too much sense to be dismissed.
-more-
AND NOW IT ALL BEGINS.
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