Middle East Features
ANALYSIS: Syrian-Israeli contacts worry Iran, Hezbollah
May 2, 2008, 12:40 GMT
Istanbul - 'Will there be another war this summer?' is a question frequently heard in Arab capitals these days.
Israel is allegedly seeking a pretext to attack the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, and perhaps to humiliate Syria will new air raids as well.
According to another theory, it is Hezbollah, which proved a tough foe in its war with Israel two years ago, that is itching to fight the Jewish state again with Iran's support.
Secret, indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel - held since April 2007 with Turkish mediation and publicly confirmed by Turkey and Syria for the first time last week - make no sense at all in this context. Or do they?
Arab commentators conjecture that Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is negotiating with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in order to break Syria's tight embrace with Iran, Israel's archenemy.
A commentator from the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat wrote that by concluding a peace treaty with Syria, Israel could 'strike Iran in the middle of the heart' and also weaken Hezbollah, which is said to be still getting Iranian weapons via Syria.
The discreet Turkish mediators, working under the aegis of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have so far kept mum on details of the contacts between Olmert and Assad. 'We're still at the very beginning,' remarked Foreign Minister Ali Babacan dismissively.
But if one believes Syria's ex-vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam, who has been calling for the overthrow of the Assad regime since 2006 from Paris, then the talks have already progressed quite far.
Khaddam also claims that the Turks are not merely 'letter carriers,' but have presented compromise proposals of their own to the hostile neighbours.
Khaddam cites US sources that are supposedly well informed of the course of the covert talks.
He says Israel has offered Assad a complete withdrawal from part of the Golan Heights, and that the area in question may be somewhat smaller than what Israel offered his late father, president Hafez al- Assad, during talks in Geneva in 2000.
Israel is said to want to lease the rest of the Golan from Syria for several decades.
Khaddam and a number of neutral Arab observers surmise that Iran and Hezbollah not only play a role in Israel's equation but also in the calculations of Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to wriggle out of the international isolation he manoeuvred himself into on account of his close partnership with Teheran.
Assad allegedly also hopes that peace negotiations with Israel could end an investigation of his brother-in-law and other Syrian officials who are suspected - possibly with Assad's knowledge - of pulling the strings in the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
© Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
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If Israel gives back the Golen Heights that will be the end of our homeland!
If the jew gives up the land, we can bomb them easier
If the cancer cell is strong enough to seek a pretext to attack the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, and perhaps to humiliate Syria with new air raids, or even foolishly 'strike Iran in the middle of the heart', they wouldn't need to give any concession when it comes to Syria or any other country. In fact they are more than willing to give all the world to Iran if they just stopped picking on them.
Zionists know very well that Hezbollah with help of Iran can easily shatter the image of their blood thirsty, inhuman, pathetic soldiers. Whatever they say to immigrants is only to calm them down. But there is a limit. Soon they will start asking questions. There are no answers. You immigrated to a country that is not yours. Pack your bags and save your children. There are no innocents in occupied Palestine.
Zionists use to talk proudly and straight-backed about the Osirak in Iraq. What they forget to mention is that all was prearranged. US assured Saddam with all help he could get to fight back Iran and cancer cell benefit from the action to scare other countries in the region with having such good pilots. These pilots still travel around and talk about it in different occasions. I was in one of them.
Now, do you remember when Saddam fired his missiles over your head during the 1991 Persian Gulf war? Did zionists responded? It was all politic. They were not supposed to answer. They simply couldn't. Was that a credit to Saddam?
All wars that zionists have had until now has been a soft war against corrupted arab leaders. Now you may say the same arab leade Saddam occupied you with the same war for eight years. The truth is that Iran was fighting US and ALL pathetic arab countries except Syria at that time. We had nothing to fight with. Thats different.
Ultimate word; Do not trust your politicians.
When has Iran ever won a war?
They lost to Iraq. Their big, brilliant strategy was sending human waves of 12 year olds into the teeth of Iraqi artillery. Not very smart or effective.
Occupied by the UK, Russia.. lost to Afghanistan, the Ottoman empire... humiliation going back to Thermopylae... when Iranians try to fight like men they invariably get their asses kicked.
That is why Iranians do terrorism not war; because they are cowards who can't fight face to face, only stab in the back.
Israel needn't be worried, with over 200 warheads (including hydrogen) indexed to Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz, Shiraz, Ahvaz, Qom, Kermanshah, Zahedan, Orumiyeh, Rasht, Kerman, Hamadan, Arak, Yazd, Ardabil, Bandar-e Abbas, Qazvin, Sanandaj, Zanjan, Khorramabad, Abadan, Dezful, Borujerd, Kashan, Gorgan, Sari, Sabzevar, Amol, Babol and every other strategic target or population center targeted for multiple strikes you pussys had better pipe down and continue doing what you do best: killing each other instead of actual humans.
Only an idiot can think that zionist beasts can ever be honest and sincere, not just to other people, rather even to jews! Hitler's actions to kill the worst of the human beings, that plotted against him is witness of that. The zionists helped Hitler kill the jews.
WHEN THERE IS NO SINCERITY, NOBODY CAN WIN THE PUBLIC
Obviously people are too inbred in the Middle East and in this forum.
Israelis need to start marrying Iranians and Palestinians; and visa versa. Jews need to marry muslims and christians; and visa versa.
And finally, people must not value a rock or piece of dirt greater than human life and peace.
The jews are killing the Muslims and Palestinian Christians for rocks only, they need to appreciate life!
Hard to get married when some one eyebrowed chimpanzee is shooting an AK-47 at you, blowing himself to pieces to get to paradise or flying an aircraft full of people in to buildings full of people.
'no love for savages'
I'm beginning to understand why christians kill muslims, etc., and visa versa. Thank you for your lesson.
Peace be with you.
'I'm beginning to understand why christians[sic] kill muslims, etc., and visa versa.'
With islamist attacks in India and the Sudan and Algeria and Afghanistan and New York and Pakistan and Israel and Russia and Chechnya and the Philippines and Indonesia and Nigeria and England and Thailand and Spain and Egypt and Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and Ingushetia and Dagestan and Turkey and Kabardino-Balkaria and Morocco and Yemen and Lebanon and France and Uzbekistan and Gaza and Tunisia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Mauritania and Kenya and Eritrea and Syria and Somalia and California and Argentina and Kuwait and Virginia and Ethiopia and Iran and Jordan and United Arab Emirates and Louisiana and Texas and Tanzania and Germany and Australia and Pennsylvania and Belgium and Denmark and East Timor and Qatar and Maryland and Tajikistan and the Netherlands and Scotland and Chad and Canada and China and Nepal and the Maldives where do you see all these 'Christians' doing the killing?
'Peace be with you.'
Shove it up your ass you disingenuous, appeasing attention whore idiot.
Same language is used by the pious of your religion.
Do not call them Islamicists, call those attackers as Bastards of white man. The white man made them Islamicist and white man made them Mojahideen. A mojahid in reality does not kill women,children and innocent people. We brought them up in our zeal to destroy USSR.
Everybody, wash your blogs with soap. Play nice, and teach yourselves about getting along with those with differing beliefs. Diplomats can't be this bad, can they?
'The white man made them Islamicist and white man made them Mojahideen. '
You are just incapable of taking any responsibility for anything? No wonder you and yours are the worlds charity cases, never making it to civilization.
'A mojahid in reality does not kill women,children and innocent people.'
They do every day, no matter what you call them; they murder innocents every day in the name of islam.
Only dupes and idiots believe that acts of terror are helpful to muslim peoples.
every act of 'terror for allah' is an ugly stain on the millions of muslims
those harmed the most by the stains are the ones the 'juhidistas' think they are helping
the 'jihadistas' are pathetic idiots who are bringing shame upon their own families and neighbors!!!
illegimate regimes and falsely pious clerics who are bankrolling said itiots need to be eliminated with extreme predjudice and the sooner the better.
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HowardMay 2nd, 2008 - 18:28:12
Seems to me that negotiating to give Syria land that looks down on the Galilee is a move to be expected by that retarded chimpanzee Olmert.
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