Israel attacked Syria because it says it backs groups like Islamic Jihad. Arabs fear Washington stands behind Israel in this assessment, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem On 5 October Israeli warplanes launched their first attack inside Syria since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Syria responded by tabling a resolution at the UN Security Council condemning the "Israeli aggression", while playing down its regional significance. The raid was "an attempt by the Israeli government to extract itself from crisis [in Israel and the occupied territories] by trying to terrorise Syria and drag it and the region into other wars because this [Israeli] government is one of war and war is the justification of its existence," Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad told Al- Hayat newspaper on 7 October. It is difficult to share this analysis. The reality is that for the first time in 30 years Israel has extended its long attritional war with Syria over the occupied Golan Heights beyond the "theatres" of the occupied territories and Lebanon to Syria itself. Moreover it received explicit American endorsement in doing so. The woman who triggered the change was Hanadi Jaradat, a 27-year-old trainee lawyer from Jenin. On 4 October she slipped through a gate in Israel's new West Bank security barrier to reach a restaurant in Haifa. There she blew herself up, killing 19 Israelis and wounding scores -- Jews, Arabs and children alike. Islamic Jihad claimed the carnage as retribution for the Israeli army's serial assassinations and arrests of Islamist leaders in recent months as well as the Israeli government's decision last week to extend the barrier deep into the West Bank. Jaradat's motives were more visceral. In June she witnessed the Israeli army kill her brother and nephew during one of its raids on Jenin. If there was one cause for becoming a suicide bomber, "it was revenge for her brother," said another sibling. The next day the army demolished the family's home. The Palestinian leadership responded to the attack with alarm. Coming on the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday, all were reminded of the suicide bombing before the Passover holiday at a hotel in Netanya in March 2002. Ariel Sharon had used that attack as licence to re-conquer most of the West Bank. The fear was that the Haifa attack would be similarly invoked to turn the Israeli government's "in principle" decision to "remove" Yasser Arafat into operational fact. Arafat declared a "state of emergency" throughout the Palestinian Authority areas and approved a nine- man emergency Palestinian government, headed by prime minister designate, Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala). The decision, which was taken under international pressure, sidelined the Palestinian parliament, was criticised as unconstitutional by some of Fatah's younger lawmakers and denounced outright by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The protests made no impact. Arafat's focus now was on survival, using the formation of a government as a last shield to ward off what all feared would be an imminent Israeli attack. It did not come, though fewer and fewer Palestinians doubt that it will. Instead Sharon turned his guns on Ein Al-Sahib camp 12 miles outside Damascus, alleging it was a "terrorist training camp" for Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups. Jihad denied all association with the camp. Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine-General Command said it had been one of their military bases but was abandoned long ago. Locals said the same. Syrian police threw an impenetrable curtain around the site to prevent any independent inspection. Claim and counter-claim were largely redundant. Most observers read Israel's attack less as a military operation than a political and ideological one. Israel was signalling that the means it has used to quell the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories -- and, before that, the resistance in south Lebanon -- would now be applied to Syria and any other Arab or Islamic regime that hosts, lauds or supports groups like Islamic Jihad, Hamas or Hizbullah. To ram home the message, on 7 October the Israeli army released a map showing the homes of Palestinian leaders in Damascus as well as 10 sites identified as the offices of Palestinian factions. Clearly these await the same fate as similar homes and offices in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel "will strike its enemies in every place and in every way", said Sharon at a ceremony marking the 1973 war. It is a posture completely at one with the American administration. "The prime minister must defend his country," said George Bush on 7 October. "We would be doing the same thing. At the same time," he added, "I will continue to say to Ariel Sharon: 'avoid escalating violence'." The two are incompatible. Following the attack on Syria skirmishes flared on the Israel-Lebanon border, claiming the lives of an Israeli soldier and a four-year old Lebanese boy. Israel drew up heavy reinforcements to the old/new front-line, gave warning that it may call up reservists and imposed an unusually harsh closure regime on the occupied territories. These may be defensive measures. They may also be preparations for a strike on Lebanon, an attack on Gaza or a final move against Arafat in Ramallah. All are aware -- Israeli and Arab alike -- that one spark will start a fire. It is likely to stay that way. Nor is this simply because Sharon seeks to export his domestic crisis to the region, as some believe and Assad implied. Sharon is not facing a domestic crisis when it comes to military policy. Sixty-three per cent of Israelis supported the attack on Syria and 70 per cent back the assassinations of Hamas leaders in Gaza and the decision to remove Arafat from the West Bank. The Arabs real problem is that it is faced with an Israeli-American alliance that views preemptive attacks and regime change as legitimate means in the "war against terrorism". The dilemma is rendered acute because "terrorism" now includes armed resistance to military occupation, whether this is in Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights or Iraq.
