Speculation flourishes over Israel's strike on Syria

Yahoo! News
Back to Story - Help
Israel says deterrent ability recovered after Syria strike
by Jean-Luc RenaudieSun Sep 16, 9:43 AM ET

Israel boasted on Sunday it has recovered its "deterrent capability" after an air strike in Syria triggered warnings of retaliation and intense media speculation over the aim of the operation.

"The new situation affects the entire region, including Iran and Syria," military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told parliament's powerful foreign affairs and defence committee, local media reported.

In keeping with an official Israeli wall of silence on the event, Yadlin told lawmakers he would not address the incident directly, but his statements "alluded to the Israeli raid," public radio reported.
----------------------
Syria angrily denied as US "lies" suggestions that it was receiving nuclear material from North Korea, after foreign media reports that Israel's warplanes could have been targeting a possible joint nuclear project.

Damascus said its air defences fired on Israeli warplanes which had dropped munitions deep inside its territory in the early hours of September 6, and it has protested to the UN Security Council.
---------------
Amid the silence from both Israel and Syria over the incident, alleged details of the strike have come in foreign media reports quoting anonymous officials, with two leading hypotheses emerging.
------------------

"The latest accusation could be a prelude to more attacks on Syria."

The Washington Post on Saturday quoted an anonymous Middle East expert as saying the "attack appeared to have been linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying material from North Korea labelled as cement."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070916/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictisraelsyria_070916134338

Syria Under Siege
September 18, 2007: Israel has still not admitted what it's F-15s were bombing in northern Syria on September 6th. Syria complained bitterly, the media speculated and the government said nothing. This caused a spike in popularity polls for Israeli officials, which may have been the main objective of the operation. There are plenty of targets in Syria, like shipments of weapons for Hizbollah, or new Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. Nuclear weapons were also mentioned. But it's all speculation, and all that Israeli officials will talk about is the Israeli ability to hit their enemies anywhere, at any time.
-----------------------------------------------------

In Lebanon, police continue to hunt down and arrest Palestinian and Syrian terrorists who escaped the siege near Tripoli. Several dozen terrorists hid in the bombed out town after the siege ended, or managed to slip away. But the terrorists have little local support, and are being turned in by civilians. The police are particularly interested in the Islamic terrorists from Syria, who were apparently the chief proponents of the violence that led to the siege. Three of these Syrians have been captured in the last week. Lebanon already has the UN closing in on Syrians who were assassinating Lebanese politicians, and now this. But that's not the only problem in Syria. In 2003, Syria was quick to provide sanctuary for Iraqi officials fleeing war crimes prosecution for Saddam era misdeeds. At first, it was only the wealthy government officials. But in the last year, thousands of low level operatives, and many more Sunni Arabs fleeing growing Shia anger against all Sunnis because of terror attacks, have crowded into Syria. There are now over a million of these Iraqi refugees in Syria. Most of these Iraqis are poor, and Syria has not got the resources to deal with the problem. So, just like hordes of Palestinian refugees eventually destabilized Lebanon and triggered a long civil war, Syria fears the same fate. To the average Syrian, the problems on the ground are far more threatening than Israeli F-15s overhead.http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20070918.aspx

Syria warns of US “lies” over nuke cooperation
(AFP)

16 September 2007
DAMASCUS - An official Syrian daily warned on Sunday that US “lies” over nuclear cooperation with North Korea could serve as a pretext for an attack on Syria following an Israeli violation of its airspace.

“Members of the choir have started up a new song that is full of hostility, this time about Syrian-Korean nuclear cooperation,” Ath-Thawra said. “This is a big lie... Syria is used to having to put up with such lies.”

The Washington Post reported last Thursday that North Korea may be helping Syria build some kind of nuclear facility, citing unnamed intelligence sources.

Israel’s secret service had relayed the information to the US government, which the Post described as “dramatic.”
-------------
Syria has said its air defences fired on Israeli warplanes, which dropped munitions deep inside its territory in the early hours of September 6, triggering intense media speculation about the action.

Israel has not confirmed the incident and kept up a policy of official silence, with the only details on the mysterious attack coming from foreign media reports citing anonymous officials.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/September/middleeast_September196.xml§ion=middleeast&col=

Israel keeping silent on reported Syria strike
(DPA)
12 September 2007
TEL AVIV - Israel continued Wednesday its policy of absolute silence regarding reports that it carried out an airstrike inside Syria last week, as speculation mounted as to the exact nature of the target allegedly struck.

The US Cable News Network (CNN) late Tuesday quoted unnamed ‘sources in the US government and military’ as confirming, after days of complaints by Damascus, that Israel did indeed carry out an airstrike in Syria after midnight on Wednesday last week - the first in four years.
---------
On Wednesday the Nazareth-based Arabic-language a-Sinara newspaper said Israel attacked a joint Iranian-Syrian missile base in northern Syria.

The newspaper attributed its information to an unspecified ‘Israeli source’ and said the base was destroyed.

Since the Syrian complaints first surfaced last Thursday, Israel has consistently kept silent, with Olmert even instructing his usually voluble ministers not to open their mouths on the issue.
--------------------
Syria filed a formal complaint to the United Nations Tuesday, accusing Israel of violating its airspace and dropping ‘some munitions’ without causing human casualties or, it said, property damage.

The ‘aggression,’ Damascus warned, could lead to uncontrollable ‘serious consequences.’