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  • Three Syrian mortar shells land in Israeli territory

    http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=291003


    Three Syrian mortar shells land in Israeli territory

    By JPOST.COM STAFF, REUTERS
    LAST UPDATED: 11/08/2012 13:56
    One shell lands in the Eloni Habashan moshav, does not explode; officials say shells were errant; stray fire kills 2 in Turkey.

    Photo: Nir Ellias/Reuters Three mortar shells from Syria fell on Israel territory on Thursday, Israel Radio reported.
    One of the shells landed in the Eloni Habashan moshav, but did not explode. No injuries or damage were reported.
    Related:

    Defense officials said they don't believe the mortars were intentionally fired at Israel, but rather were errant shells from internal fighting in Syria.
    Gunfire from Syria wounds civilians in Turkey
    Meanwhile, two civilians in Turkey's Hatay province were wounded by gunfire from Syria, a Turkish official said.
    The two Turkish citizens in the border town of Ceylanpinar were struck by stray bullets fired from the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain just across the border where Syrian rebels are fighting government forces.
    One woman and one young man were wounded, the official said.
    Turkish state-run Anatolian news agency said both casualties had been taken to hospital and that Turkish security forces had increased their presence along that stretch of the border.
    Turkey has been bolstering security along its 910-km (560-mile) border with Syria and has been responding in kind to gunfire and mortar shells hitting its territory.
    On Saturday, three Syrian tanks entered the demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights, and remained there for several hours into the evening.
    The tanks, which were involved in heavy clashes with Syrian rebels, encroached the decades-old cease-fire agreement between Jerusalem and Damascus.
    Israel lodged a complaint with the UN over the ceasefire violation. The defense establishment has concluded, however, that the movement of tanks was linked to the Syrian civil war, and not intended as an act of aggression against Israel.
    Nevertheless, the IDF raised its alert level in the Golan Heights region.
    In October, the IDF evacuated tourists from the top of Mount Hermon after sighting dozens of Syrians – many of them with guns – in civilian clothing approaching the border.
    The suspects, who may have been rebels, did not infiltrate the border, and stopped their approach to the fence some 500 meters away from the international boundary.
    Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.

  • #2
    The below is related I think. Assad has realized he is losing to the Syrian insurgency, but is thinking about his legacy. i think he does not want to be remembered for killing his own people, but for starting a protracted war with Israel.


    Assad vows to 'live and die' in Syria as crisis mounts


    Red Cross 'can't cope' with war that has killed about 36,000

    The Associated Press

    Posted: Nov 8, 2012 7:20 AM ET

    Last Updated: Nov 8, 2012 8:04 AM ET


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    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vowed in an interview released today that he will "live and die" in his home country, as the crisis that has left at least 36,000 dead mounts to the point that the Red Cross says it is struggling to gain access to prisoners.
    Assad spoke in English with Russia Today TV and excerpts of the interview were posted on the station's website on Thursday, with an Arabic voiceover.
    Two days earlier, British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that Assad could be allowed safe passage out of the country if that would guarantee an end to the nation's civil war.
    But Assad said in the interview: "I am Syrian, made in Syria, and I will live and die in Syria."
    In excerpts of the interview, the Syrian president is seen casually talking and later walking with Russia Today's reporter outside a house, wearing a grey suit and tie. It was not clear where the interview took place.
    "I am not a puppet, I was not made by the West for me to go to the West or any other country," Assad, 47, said.
    The Syrian president also warned against foreign military intervention.
    "I don't think the West is headed in this direction, but if it does, nobody can predict the consequences," he told the station.
    The full interview will be broadcast on Friday, the TV station said.
    Crisis 'deepening every day'

    Earlier, Peter Maurer, head of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, said it can't cope with the worsening civil war, despite an increase in the scope of the organization's operations since the crisis began in March 2011.
    Maurer said Thursday "there is no doubt that the seriousness of the crisis is deepening every day. This trend has been uninterrupted since summer."
    Since summer the Red Cross has improved its transportation and logistics, making it easier to bring in truckloads of food and medicine, but it has become overwhelmed by the dire need of hundreds of thousands of people struggling inside the country, he said.
    He also said there has been no "major progress" on gaining better access to prisoners.
    Maurer said the Red Cross is in "difficult negotiations" to expand the scope of their prison visits. As the arbiter of the rules of war known as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the organization has a unique role to play in the monitoring of prison conditions worldwide and providing humanitarian help for people affected by conflict and armed violence.
    The Red Cross is awaiting a response to request to visit 25 main prisons in Syria, but also is trying to gain access to other detention facilities, Maurer said.
    One improvement, he said, was Assad's willingness to assign a senior Army officer within his military command to serve as a direct communications link with a Red Cross officer, giving the aid organization "a direct channel in terms of confidential conduct-of-hostility dialogue with the Syrian forces."
    Mortar rounds land in Golan Heights

    Meanwhile, Syrian strife continues to spill across its borders, with mortar rounds landing inside the Israeli-held Golan Heights, the third time in less than a week that the civil war has spilled over into the Golan.
    Israel's military says three mortar rounds fired from Syria landed there on Thursday, but no injuries were reported.One round fell on a communal farm.
    Security officials think the fire from Syria has been inadvertent.
    On Monday, a bullet fired from Syria struck an Israeli military jeep on the Golan, a territory Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war.
    On Saturday, three Syrian tanks entered a demilitarized zone on the Golan.

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    • #3
      http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...rom-gaza-syria


      Israel Fires on Syria a Second Time, Warns Hamas of 'Painful' Price

      By Jonathan Ferziger and Calev Ben-David on November 12, 2012
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      Israel faced fire on two fronts for a second day as rockets from the Gaza Strip hit its south, while a Syrian mortar shell landed in the Golan Heights on its northern reaches, drawing a retaliatory strike.
      The Israeli tank fire was aimed at the source of the mortar launch across the Syrian frontier and scored “direct hits,” the army said in an e-mailed statement. The army said that “fire emanating from Syria into Israel will not be tolerated and shall be responded to with severity.”
      The attacks highlight Israel’s vulnerabilities at a time when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vying for re-election on Jan. 22. Netanyahu vowed to escalate military operations to defend the country’s citizens.
      “I don’t know any of your governments who could accept such a thing,” Netanyahu told foreign ambassadors he took today on a visit to the coastal city of Ashkelon, a target of Gaza rocket strikes. “We will not allow our borders to be violated or our citizens to be fired upon.”
      Defense Minister Ehud Barak consulted today with senior military commanders in Tel Aviv on the security situation in the south. Barak raised the prospect of a new ground offensive, the first since Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza in 2009 after a three-week military assault that left more than 1,100 Palestinians dead.
      “If we are forced to re-enter Gaza in order to strike Hamas and restore security to Israeli residents, we won’t hesitate,” Barak said in Tel Aviv yesterday.
      According to the Israel police, at least 10 rockets were fired from Gaza today, a marked drop from the more than 100 rockets in the past two days.
      Quiet Border

      Amid concern about Gaza, Israel faced the prospect that fighting between forces loyal to Syrian Bashar al-Assad and rebels seeking to oust him could destabilize its quietest frontier since the 1973 Middle East war. A mortar from Syria yesterday struck an army post on the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan Heights, causing no injuries. Israeli soldiers responded by firing a warning missile into Syria, and the government filed a complaint with the United Nations.
      Barak said Israeli’s military “has been instructed to prevent” the Syrian conflict “from spilling over into our territory. Additional shelling into Israel from Syria will elicit a tougher response, exacting a higher price from Syria.
      Israel’s shekel was the worst performer among 31 expanded major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, dropping 0.5 percent to 3.9320 a dollar as of 4:56 p.m. in Tel Aviv, headed for the lowest settlement since Sept. 13.
      ‘Less Reluctant’

      ‘‘There is a feeling that something is going to happen, that things are escalating,’’ said Moshe Nir, a trader at Mercantile Discount Bank Ltd. in Tel Aviv. ‘‘All this talk makes people nervous. It makes foreign investors especially jittery as they don’t see it the way we locals do. They are less reluctant to just get out.’’
      Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, condemned the Gaza violence today and backed Egyptian efforts to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups.
      ‘‘I support the mediation efforts by Egypt and reiterate that there is no place for violence in the Middle East,’’ Ashton said in an e-mailed statement.
      The latest violence in the south was ignited when Palestinian militants fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli patrol along the Gaza Strip border fence on Nov. 10, wounding four soldiers, the army said in a statement. The Israeli military responded with tank shelling and air strikes into Gaza, including a direct hit on a rocket-launching squad, killing six and wounding more than 30, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
      ‘Change Response’

      ‘‘We need to change our response,’’ Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Army Radio today. ‘‘We need to change it until Hamas says ‘enough.’’’
      Barak said Israel holds the Islamic Hamas responsible for the attacks from Gaza and the group will pay a ‘‘severe and painful’’ price for them.
      Hamas seized control of Gaza from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party in 2007, ending a partnership government a year after winning elections.
      ‘‘You can’t rule out a connection between the tensions on the Syrian border and in Gaza,” said Jonathan Spyer, a professor of political science at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. “The Islamic Jihad, which is setting the pace in terms of rocket fire, is a client of Iran and Iran is also a main backer of Syria.”
      Spyer said he didn’t expect Netanyahu to go for a large operation against Gaza before Israeli elections.
      “If he can avoid it, he won’t want a ground incursion,” Spyer said by phone. “It doesn’t fit into his pattern of behavior. In contrast to his predecessors, he tries to diffuse the tensions.”
      At the same time, he added that “there is always the danger of things spinning out of control.”
      To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net; Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem at cbendavid@bloomberg.net
      To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net

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