A decade’s history of Israeli attacks on Syria
Sunday, 5 May 2013
Israeli warplanes struck areas in and around the Syrian capital Sunday,
setting off a series of explosions. (Al Arabiya)
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Al Arabiya -
Israeli warplanes struck areas in and around the Syrian capital
Sunday, setting off a series of explosions as they targeted a shipment
of highly accurate, Iranian-made guided missiles believed to be on their way to
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, officials and activists
said.
The attack, the second in three days, signaled a sharp escalation of Israel’s
involvement in Syria’s bloody civil war.
In 40 years, since a war with Syria then ruled by Hafez Assad, Israel has
been locked in a cold standoff with Damascus. And since 2000, with
Bashar al-Assad as Syrian president, Israeli attacks against the country were
reported frequently.
The beginning was in July 2001, when
Israeli warplanes attacked Syrian military radar in Lebanon, responding
to a Hezbollah attack against Israeli bases in the Shebaa Farms, a small
uninhabited territory claimed by Lebanon yet occupied by Israel.
But what has been considered as the first overt Israeli military operation
in Syria since 1973, was The Ain es Saheb airstrike, which occurred on
October 5, 2003. Israel targeted Palestinian militants in the Ain es
Saheb training camp, 25 kilometers northwest of the Syrian capital
Damascus, in response to the suicide bombing in Haifa 12 hours earlier
by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Israel Defense Forces [IDF]
claimed the camp was used to train recruits in bomb assembly and
guerrilla warfare.
In June, 2006, Israel sent four F-16s over
different parts of Syria and Lebanon as a warning to Damascus. According to the
Israeli Air Force, the planes flew low for several minutes over
Assad’s summer residence in Latakia in northern Syria, after easily
getting through the country’s radar defenses. The F-16s broke the sound
barrier over Latakia as well as over Beirut. The planes arrived back at
base without incident.
Again on September 6, 2007, Israel led
Operation Orchard, an Israeli air and commando mission against Syria’s
alleged nuclear program. The mission targeted a “Nuclear reactor” near
the city of Deir ez-zour according to [IDF].
In November 2011,
after a few months before the uprising in Syria started, Israel fired
shells into the country after mortars fell on the Israeli part of the
Golan Heights, during clashes between the Syrian regime army & the
Free Syrian Army. A similar incident happened on March 24, 2013, when
Israel destroyed a machine-gun position in the Golan Heights from which
shots were fired at Israeli soldiers in a further spillover from Syria’s civil
war.
Finally, Jamraya was also attacked by Israeli
warplanes earlier this year, on January 30. The target was a convoy
carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry, which was allegedly on its way to
Hezbollah’s Shiite militia wing in Lebanon.
In all former occasions, and throughout the years, Syrian authorities always
had the
same statement after every attack “Syria retains the right to respond.”
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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