Israel launches a new wave of provocation against Syria

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DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syria said its air defences opened fire on Israeli warplanes which had violated Syrian airspace at dawn on Thursday, ratcheting up the tension between the neighbouring foes.


A Syrian cabinet minister warned that the nation's leadership was considering its response to the Israeli "aggression" while in Israel the military declined any comment.

"Enemy Israeli planes penetrated Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean Sea heading towards the northeast, breaking the sound barrier," a Syrian army spokesman told the official SANA news agency.

"Our air defences repulsed them and forced them to leave... after the Israeli planes dropped munitions, without causing human or material loss," he said, without giving further information on what exactly was dropped.

Syria's allegations came amid a war of words with Israel, with each blaming the other for stoking regional tensions and for the failure to revive peace talks that have been stalled for seven years.

Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told pan-Arab satellite television Al-Jazeera that Syria's leadership was "giving serious consideration to its response... to this aggression."

In Israel, the military refused to comment on Syria's claims, saying: "We do not comment on such reports."

Former major general Uzi Dayan said the military's silence was an indication of Israel's eagerness not to allow the incident to stoke tensions with Syria.

"Israel is active on many fronts in the Middle East but we have no intention to bring about a deterioration in the situation. That is why the Israeli reaction was so short and restrained," he told private Channel Two television.

The United States also declined any formal comment.

But a State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity said: "I don't think anybody here is viewing this with any particular or unique concern."

A Syrian minister admitted to Al-Jazeera's English-language channel that it remained unclear whether the Israeli aircraft had actually carried out an attack.

"They intervened in our airspace... which they should not do -- we are a sovereign country and they should not come into airspace," Expatriate Affairs Minister Bussaina Shaaban said.

"We do not know yet" if the aircraft dropped anything. "The investigation is still going on on the ground," she said.

In June 2006, Israeli warplanes flew over President Bashar al-Assad's palace in northern Syria while he was inside, an action Damascus condemned as an "act of piracy."

Over the past few months, Israeli and Syrian leaders have both said their countries do not want a war, but were preparing for any possibility while each side has accused the other of arming for a conflict.

Syria and Israel remain technically at a state of war, and peace talks broke down in 2000 over the fate of the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed in 1981.

The last overflight by Israel in 2006 came amid high tensions in the Middle East after the Jewish state launched a massive military offensive on the Gaza Strip to try to retrieve a soldier captured by Palestinian militants.

The Gaza action was followed just a few weeks later by a devastating Israeli war in Lebanon against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah militia, after two soldiers were captured in a raid by the guerrillas.

Syria shelters a number of radical Palestinian groups, and is home to Khaled Meshaal, the exiled supremo of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) who tops Israel's most wanted list.

Last month, Israel said it was reducing its military presence on the Golan Heights and lowering its level of alert.

However, it said it will continue to conduct regular training on the plateau as part of its training following the Lebanon war against Hezbollah, which revealed major shortcomings in the army's conduct.

And Israel continues to carry out occasional flights over neighbouring Lebanon, triggering protests from Beirut and concern from the United Nations peacekeeping force monitoring a ceasefire there.

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