Israel media warn of escalating conflict with Syria

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli media on Friday warned that an alleged air strike on a convoy carrying arms from Syria to Lebanon’s Hezbollah could set off a chain reaction, and reported troops on high alert in the country’s north.

There was still no official Israeli comment on Syrian claims that Israeli warplanes bombed a military site near Damascus on Wednesday or on separate reports that its aircraft struck a weapons convoy along the Syria-Lebanon border.

Israeli soldiers stand guard next to a road sign showing the different distances to Jerusalem, Baghdad, Damascus and other locations, at an army post in Mount Bental in the annexed Golan Heights on January 31.AFP

Newspapers, however, seemed to have little doubt on what had happened or the likely consequences.

“Complete restraint over the long term to Israel’s actions could be considered weakness by Hezbollah, so we should expect some form of response, even if not immediately and not necessarily a broad rocket and missile attack on Israel,” defence commentator Amos Harel wrote in the left-leaning Haaretz daily.

“The Hezbollah convoy, which according to foreign reports was attacked from the air while travelling from Syria to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, laden with explosives, will not be the last,” Nahum Barnea wrote in Yediot Aharonot.

“It would seem, from a pessimistic view, that we are on the way to a military confrontation on at least one of the two northern fronts,” he added, referring to Israel’s borders with Syrian and Lebanon.

The top-selling paper’s front page said that the army’s northern command had declared a state of high alert, but the military spokesman’s office refused to confirm or deny this when asked by AFP.

The Syrian army said an Israeli strike early on Wednesday targeted a “scientific research centre” near Damascus, with local residents telling AFP it was a non-conventional weapons research centre.

Israel had frequently warned that if Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons fell into the Hezbollah hands, this would be a casus belli.

But the Jewish state has also raised the alarm over long-range Scud missiles or other advanced weaponry, such as anti-aircraft systems and surface-to-surface missiles, being transferred to the Lebanese Shiite militia.