Israel threatens Syria of more raids
Syria-Israel, Politics, 1/8/2004

The Israeli army chief of staff Moshe Yaloun has threatened Syria further Israeli air strikes, unless it halts activities of the Palestinian groups in its territories.

In a statement for the Israeli army radio yesterday, Yaloun said that the raid which targeted Ein al-Saheb area, to the north of Damascus in October 2003 was a message to Syria and the international community that many similar acts on them can also be made.

The Israeli army chief of staff also called on Damascus not to ignore this warning, and to move immediately against Palestinian activists.

Israel alleged that its air raid on October 5 targeted a camp in Ein al-Saheb, claiming the camp is for training members of the Hamas Islamic resistance movement and the Islamic Jihad, while Damascus stressed that the camp is deserted, and that the raid targeted Syrian civilians.

Worthy mentioning that Syria is also exposed to intensive American pressures to halt activities of the Palestinian groups, some of which take Damascus as a headquarters.

This threat comes in the context of a series of Israeli positions in retaliation to the call made by the US President Bashar al-Assad on the US on December 2003 to help the resumption of negotiations between Damascus and Tel Aviv. Negotiations which have been suspended since 2000.

The Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon rejected to resume the negotiations from the point they had reached with the government of the former Israeli prime minister Euhud Barak, and inssists that negotiations with Syria start all over from zero point.

Also by the end of 2003, the Israeli minister of agriculture, Israel Kats, announced that a ministerial committee under his chairmanship decided to accelerate the building of 900 houses in the agricultural settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan heights, and to increase number of populations of the agricultural settlements from 10,500 settlers to 15,000.

Previous Stories:
  Syria's two messages to the UN on Israeli expansion policy in the Golan   (1/6/2004)
  Syrian Citizens of Golan challenge Israel's expansion decision   (1/5/2004)
  Wide condemnation to Israel's decision to expand settlements in the Golan   (1/2/2004)

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