Israel to Regret Attacking Syria: Iran's Security Chief

Iran's head of supreme national security council Saed Jalili said here Monday that Israel will regret its recent attack on a Syrian military research center.

Speaking at a press conference Monday at the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Jalili said that as Israel had regretted previous wars and aggressions, it will also regret its attack on Wednesday, adding that the Syrian government and people are serious in that regard.

His remarks came against the backdrop of the Israeli airstrike that hit a Syrian military research center in the Jumraia suburb of the capital Damascus on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Jalili, who arrived in Syria on Saturday to discuss the Israeli attack, said that Iran will capitalize on all its relationships in the international circles to support Syria, adding Syria is an important part of the Islamic world, which " will never permit any aggression on it."

The Israeli attack "has proven its failure to stir up internal differences in Syria," he said. "The Zionist enemy, its allies and tools are trying to hit the resistance in the area" as they have realized that there is a "genuine chance for a unity around the idea of resistance."

Jalili pointed out that Syria is espousing the path of resistance and has defended its causes "and subsequently it would be an aim for the enemies who will go on with avenging it."

On the crisis in Syria, Jalili reasserted that the solution for the crisis in Syria can only be "Syrian," emphasizing the " democratic means and national dialogue" as the way out.

"We have stressed, from the very beginning, that terrorism and violence could not be conducive to bringing in stability in this country," he said, adding that supporting the Syrian people could not be done through undermining the infrastructure but rather through national dialogue.

"We believe that the political program outlined recently by Syrian President Bashar a-Assad will pose the appropriate base for dialogue," he stressed, adding that "foreign intervention, terrorist practices and violent acts are all condemned."

On Sunday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said during his meeting with Jalili that Syria is capable of repulsing any aggression that might target its people, thanks to the strength of its military and the awareness of its people.

During the meeting, Assad stressed that "this aggression reveals the real role Israel is playing in cooperation with external hostile powers and their tools on the Syrian ground to destabilize the stability of Syria."

Although the details surrounding the rare air raid are still murky, Syria threatened Thursday to retaliate for the brazen attack, and its main regional ally Iran said there will be repercussions for the Jewish state over the air raid.

Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak confirmed the airstrike on Sunday at a time the United Nations called for self-restraint.

Syria said the bombed facility in Jurmaya had been repeatedly targeted by rebels who failed to storm it, adding that Israel did what the rebels could not.

U.S. officials said the Israeli airstrike targeted a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons and heading form Syria to Lebanon. Syria denied the claim and said the air raid targeted a research center for scientific purposes.

Israeli warplanes strike Gaza

Israeli warplanes struck several times Wednesday and early Thursday along the country's border with Gaza, killing three people and wounding several others, medical sources told reporters.

Early Thursday, an Israeli warplane shot missiles at a social club in northern Gaza, killing two people and wounding 20, including women and children, medical sources said.

On Wednesday, an air strike on a tunnel between Rafa and Egypt left three people seriously wounded, the sources said. The Israel Defense Forces said that an Israeli warplane hit an Islamic Jihad militant from the city of Rafa who was involved in smuggling weapons "and sought the execution of terrorist activity in Sinai."

The victim had operated with Gaza elements who had recently tried to carry out an attack in Sinai, on Israel's border with Egypt, it added.

Hamas security and medical sources reported a strike in Rafa in which one man was killed and three others were wounded, two of them critically, when their Jeep was struck. The four men were members of Islamic Jihad, sources with the Palestinian militant group said. In response, Islamic Jihad said Wednesday night that its members had fired about 10 rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. There was no immediate report of casualties.

The IDF said in a news release that it fired Wednesday night at a "terrorist squad" that had fired rockets into southern Israel. "A hit was confirmed," it said. On Wednesday morning, the IDF reported that two people who had fired rockets at Israel from separate locations in northern Gaza were hit moments afterward by an Israeli aircraft.

The flare-up between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza came following an attack carried out by Palestinian militants last Thursday near the southern city of Eilat, which killed eight Israelis. Another Israeli was killed by a rocket attack near the city of Beer Sheva in southern Israel.

"The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, and will respond with determination to any attempt to use terror against the State of Israel," the IDF news release said.

The U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Richard Serry, issued a statement Sunday saying he "remains worried about the continuing tensions in particular the escalation of violence in Gaza and Southern Israel." He called for a return to calm and said "the United Nations is actively engaged and supporting Egypt's important efforts in this regard," a reference to Egypt's attempt to better control the Sinai.

Israel sees Syrian hand in Golan clashes, 23dead

Israel accused Syria onMonday of orchestrating lethal confrontations on the once-quiet ceasefire line between the two countries as a distraction from Damascus's bloody crackdown on an 11-week-old revolt.

Syria said 23 people, including a woman and a child, were killed and 350 wounded on Sunday when Israeli troops fired on pro-Palestinian protestors who surged against the fortified boundary fence on Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said live Israeli fire had caused casualties and U.N. monitors were "seeking to confirm facts."

Israel contested the Syrian account and said President Bashar al-Assad was trying to shift world attention from the killing of at least 1,100 Syrians in anti-government revolts.

"You cannot reach the Syrian-Israeli border from the Syrian side without clear instructions and approvals from the government in Damascus," Israeli Civil Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said.

"For Assad, there is the supreme interest that these protests draw the fire and the attention from him to other directions," Vilnai told Israel's Army Radio. "He uses (the Palestinians). He simply uses them."

Sunday's protest was held to mark the 44th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the Golan Heights, as well as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians want to establish a state.
Though Israel and Syria are technically at war, and Syria is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war of Israel's foundation, the Golan had long been quiet.

That changed on May 15, when scores of flag-waving pro-Palestinian activists flatteneda fence on the demarcation line and briefly rallied inside Israeli-controlled territory.

Rattled by the breach, Israel beefed up its defenses and warned that lethal force could be used. A Reuters reporter on the scene on Sunday saw Israeli snipers firing at demonstrators at the fence and 10 people taken away on stretchers by comrades.


LEGITIMACY

With U.S.-brokered peace efforts stalled, some Palestinians inspired by non-violent popular revolts sweeping the Arab world areseeking to adopt similar tactics against Israel.

Israeli leaders said they feared such marcheswould recur ahead of the Palestinians' campaign to secure recognition of their claim to statehood at the United Nations in September.

The official Syrian news agency SANA put Sunday's death toll at 23 and quoted Health Minister Wael al-Halki as saying a woman anda child were among the dead. Another 350 people suffered gunshot wounds, it said.

The Israeli military said it believed that a blastfrom what it said was a Syrian land mine detonated accidentally by petrol bombs thrown by protesters had caused 10 casualties. But it offered no overall figure for the dead and wounded.

Before the Golan violence, Israel had rarely censured the Assad government for its domestic crackdowns. Successive Israeli governments have sought peace with Assad, seeing his government as a possible anchor for wider Israeli-Arab accommodation.

On Sunday, Israel predicted Assad's political demise.

"I think he will fall. He has lost his legitimacy,"said Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a former prime minister who in 2000 held indirect peace talks with Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad.

"If today he stops using force, he'll be seen as weak and will be toppled. If he continues, the killing will go deeper and the cracks will begin to appear within the army as well," Barak told Israel Radio. "In my opinion, his fate has been decided."