Assad blasts Israeli 'government of war'
Israel’s attack on Syria will enhance the country’s role in the Middle East, instead of diminishing it as the Israelis seek, Syrian President Bashar Assad said today.
In his first public comments after Israeli fighter-bombers struck Syrian territory on Sunday for the first time in 20 years, Assad said Israel was led by a “government of war” that employs war to “justify its existence.”
“There is no doubt that the role Syria plays in the various issues in our region is painful to this (Israeli) government. What happened was a failed Israeli attempt to undercut this role,” Assad said.
“We can, with full confidence, say that what happened will only make Syria’s role more effective and influential in events in the region – contrary to what this (Israeli) government wants,” Assad said.
Sunday’s airstrike hit what Israel called a camp of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, about 15 miles from Damascus. It retaliated for a suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Haifa on Saturday in which 19 people were killed. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing.
No one was killed in the Israeli strike.
Assad, 38, did not say how Syria would respond to the attack.
Asked about pressure from the United States, which has accused Syria of supporting terrorists and allowing fighters to cross into Iraq, Assad said: “We are not a superpower, but we are not a weak state either. We’re not a country without cards ... We are not a state that can be ignored in the issues under discussion.”
Early today, a Lebanese boy was killed in an explosion near the border with Israel, hours after an Israeli soldier was killed in a cross-border shooting.
The killing of the soldier prompted Israeli officials to give further warnings to Lebanon and Syria to rein in anti-Israeli militants or face an escalation of force in the area.
In today’s violence, Lebanese security officials and residents of the southern Lebanese border village of Houla said Ali Yassin, four, was killed and his twin brother wounded in the explosion.
In Jerusalem, Israel’s vice premier warned Syria that it could be the target of further Israeli attacks.
Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “We have no limitations regarding the targets and the goals so long as they are, in the end, connected to the terrorist acts.”
