WarSclerotic

Chaos in Syria and Jordan Alarms U.S. – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — Even as the Obama administration defends the NATO-led air war in Libya, the latest violent clashes in Syria and Jordan are raising new alarm among senior officials who view those countries, in the heartland of the Arab world, as far more vital to American interests.

Deepening chaos in Syria, in particular, could dash any remaining hopes for a Middle East peace agreement, several analysts said. It could also alter the American rivalry with Iran for influence in the region and pose challenges to the United States’ greatest ally in the region, Israel.

In interviews, administration officials said the uprising appeared to be widespread, involving different religious groups in southern and coastal regions of Syria, including Sunni Muslims usually loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The new American ambassador in Damascus, Robert Ford, has been quietly reaching out to Mr. Assad to urge him to stop firing on his people.

As American officials confront the upheaval in Syria, a country with which the United States has icy relations, they say they are pulled between fears that its problems could destabilize neighbors like Lebanon and Israel, and the hope that it could weaken one of Iran’s key allies.

The Syrian unrest continued on Saturday, with government troops reported to have killed more protesters.

With 61 people confirmed killed by security forces, the country’s status as an island of stability amid the Middle East storm seemed irretrievably lost.

For two years, the United States has tried to coax Damascus into negotiating a peace deal with Israel and to moving away from Iran — a fruitless effort that has left President Obama open to criticism on Capitol Hill that he is bolstering one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world.

Officials fear the unrest there and in Jordan could leave Israel further isolated. The Israeli government was already rattled by the overthrow of Egypt’s leader, Hosni Mubarak, worrying that a new government might not be as committed to Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

While Israel has largely managed to avoid being drawn into the region’s turmoil, last week’s bombing of a bus in Jerusalem, which killed one person and wounded 30, and a rain of rocket attacks from Gaza, have fanned fears that the militant group Hamas is trying to exploit the uncertainty.

The unrest in Jordan, which has its own peace treaty with Israel, is also extremely worrying, a senior administration official said. The United States does not believe Jordan is close to a tipping point, this official said. But the clashes, which left one person dead and more than a hundred wounded, pose the gravest challenge yet to King Abdullah II, a close American ally.

Syria, however, is the more urgent crisis — one that could pose a thorny dilemma for the administration if Mr. Assad carries out a crackdown like that of his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, who ordered a bombardment in 1982 that killed at least 10,000 people in the northern city of Hama. Having intervened in Libya to prevent a wholesale slaughter in Benghazi, some analysts asked, how could the administration not do the same in Syria?

Though no one is yet talking about a no-fly zone over Syria, Obama administration officials acknowledge the parallels to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Some analysts predicted the administration will be cautious in pressing Mr. Assad, not because of any allegiance to him but out of a fear of what could follow him — a Sunni-led government potentially more radical and Islamist than his Alawite minority government.

Still, after the violence, administration officials said Mr. Assad’s future was unclear. “Whatever credibility the government had, they shot it today — literally,” a senior official said about Syria, speaking on the condition that he not be named.

In the process, he said, Mr. Assad had also probably disqualified himself as a peace partner for Israel. Such a prospect had seemed a long shot in any event — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown no inclination to talk to Mr. Assad — but the administration kept working at it, sending its special envoy, George J. Mitchell, on several visits to Damascus.

Mr. Assad has said that he wants to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel. But with his population up in arms, analysts said, he might actually have an incentive to pick a fight with its neighbor, if only to deflect attention from the festering problems at home.

“You can’t have a comprehensive peace without Syria,” the administration official said. “It’s definitely in our interest to pursue an agreement, but you can’t do it with a government that has no credibility with its population.”

Indeed, the crackdown calls into question the entire American engagement with Syria. Last June, the State Department organized a delegation from Microsoft, Dell and Cisco Systems to visit Mr. Assad with the message that he could attract more investment if he stopped censoring Facebook and Twitter. While the administration renewed economic sanctions against Syria, it approved export licenses for some civilian aircraft parts.

The Bush administration, by contrast, largely shunned Damascus, recalling its ambassador in February 2005 after the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese accuse Syria of involvement in the assassination, a charge it denies.

When Mr. Obama named Mr. Ford as his envoy last year, Republicans in the Senate held up the appointment for months, arguing that the United States should not reward Syria with closer ties. The administration said it would have more influence by restoring an ambassador.

But officials also concede that Mr. Assad has been an endless source of frustration — deepening ties with Iran and the Islamic militant group Hezbollah; undermining the government of Saad Hariri in Lebanon; pursuing a nuclear program; and failing to deliver on promises of reform.

Some analysts said that the United States was so eager to use Syria to break the deadlock on Middle East peace negotiations that it had failed to push Mr. Assad harder on political reforms.

“He’s given us nothing, even though we’ve engaged him on the peace process,” said Andrew J. Tabler, who lived in Syria for a decade and is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I’m not saying we should give up on peace talks with Israel, but we cannot base our strategy on that.”

The United States does not have the leverage with Syria it had with Egypt. But Mr. Tabler said the administration could stiffen sanctions to press Mr. Assad to make reforms.

Other analysts, however, point to a positive effect of the unrest: it could deprive Iran of a reliable ally in extending its influence over Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

That is not a small thing, they said, given that Iran is likely to benefit from the fall of Mr. Mubarak in Egypt, the upheaval in Bahrain, and the resulting chill between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

“There’s much more upside than downside for the U.S.,” said Martin S. Indyk, the vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “We have an interest in counterbalancing the advantages Iran has gained in the rest of the region. That makes it an unusual confluence of our values and interests.”

Hamas says it will withhold fire if Israel does the same.

Hamas officials said on Saturday that its members in Gaza had agreed to halt their rocket fire at Israel if Israel stops launching strikes against targets in the coastal territory.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Rudwan said after a meeting with faction heads over a surge in cross-border tensions, that Hamas was “committed as long as the occupation [Israel] was committed” to restoring a de-facto ceasefire.

Moments before the meeting started, a Kassam rocket exploded in the Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries were reported and no damage was caused.

Earlier on Saturday, OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Tal Russo said on Saturday that “there is anarchy in Gaza and Hamas.”

Russo toured the house in the Negev that was hit Friday night by a Kassam rocket and stated that “it is difficult now for Hamas to turn the wheel back.”

Late Friday night a Kassam rocket exploded in Eshkol Regional Council area, causing damage to one house but no injuries.

A local official said authorities were searching for a second rocket that had fallen in an open area.

On Thursday, a rocket fired from Gaza exploded north of Ashdod. While there were no injuries, Magen David Adom crew treated a number of people for shock.

Earlier Friday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that he authorized the deployment of the Iron Dome missile defense system.

Speaking during a tour of the Gaza region, Barak said: “I authorized the IDF in the coming days to authorize the first operational deployment of Iron Dome batteries, here in the southern region.”

The test deployment, he said, “will continue for several weeks and the layout will vary with operational needs.”

The defense minister praised Iron Dome’s technology, calling it an “extraordinary development” by the defense industry. He cautioned, however, that it does not provide a 100 percent solution to the rocket threat.

The Iron Dome system will be part of the IDF’s solution to the barrage of rockets fired into southern Israel from Gaza in the last week, a statement from the IDF spokesperson said.

Iron Dome is designed to defend against rockets at a range of 4-70 km and each battery consists of a multi-mission radar manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries and three launchers, each equipped with 20 interceptors named Tamir.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis March 26, 2011, 1:45 PM (GMT+02:00)

His minority Allawites challenged by Sunni majority

The protest against Bashar Assad’s regime is swelling. From its first epicenter in the southern town of Deraa it spread Friday, March 25, to new cities, Homs, Aleppo, Latakia and parts of Damascus. It has quickly attained the scale unforeseen by the regime of

a popular uprising by the majority Sunni population (74 percent) against Allawite-dominated (15 percent) rule.

Army troops gunned the protesters down in what witnesses described as a massacre of scores and hundreds injured, raising calls from the opposition for international intervention.

The number of dead and injured cannot be reliably determined. debkafile’s intelligence sources report that special Syrian security clean-up units removed the bodies as they fell.

The authorities were caught unawares by the upsurge of street rallies that followed preachers’ sermons in hundreds of Sunni mosques calling on their congregations to go out and drive the Assads and the minority Allawite sect from power. The Syrian secret service missed the Muslim Brotherhood’s hand in organizing this mass street eruption. The strongest rallying cry came from the influential radical Egyptian television preacher Yussuf Qaradawi who called on Syria’s Sunni community to stand up for its rights as a majority.

Because the army’s 4th Division commanded by Bashar’s brother Maher Assad, the only unit to be manned by Allawites, is tied down in suppressing riots in the southern town of Deraa and most of the troops in all other units are Sunnis, Assad is short of trusted contingents to defend his regime. He figured that fresh outbreaks in Deraa would inflame the rest of the country and therefore kept the 4th Division in place.
But the outbreaks spread to other key cities anyway under slogans calling for solidarity with the martyrs of Deraa and threatening his power centers in Damascus and beyond.

Neither the conciliatory measures announced on Thursday nor the security crackdown against protesters has succeeded in stifling dissent and defusing the crisis.

Defiancecontinues in Deraa itself even after demonstrators were gunned down with live bullets. The al-Omari mosque, which was stormed by security forces on Tuesday night, was reported to be back in the hands of protesters.The mosque has been the focal point of dissent in Deraa.

The tipping point for the 11-year old Assad regime (which followed the one his father established after a military coup) is therefore not far off unless he makes the right decision or receives outside help.

He can either opt for the Qaddafi option, for instance, or follow the example of the King of Bahrain.

From the outset of the Libya revolt in February, Muammar Qaddafi opted for abandoning the east and focusing his military effort on preserving his centers of power in Tripoli and its outlying towns. After stabilizing his rule, he planned to set out and wrest the rest of the country from the rebels opposing his regime.

So far, his gamble has succeeded. The rebels backed by international forces have not unseated him.

Will Assad decide after Friday that he has enough loyal military strength to buttress his rule over all of Syria, or choose to pull in his horns and concentrate on saving Damascus?

Since much of his army is unreliable, the Syrian ruler may have to opt for the Bahrain remedy – namely, calling for outside help as did King Hamid al Khalifa who asked Riyadh for Saudi forces to prop up his throne against a Shiite-led uprising.

The allies who come to mind in the case of Assad are Iran, the Lebanese Hizballah, pro-Iranian Palestinian groups with bases in Damascus – Hamas, Jihad Islami and Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Palestinian Front-General Command.

It would take Tehran no more than a few hours to fly Revolutionary Guards units into Damascus. An Iranian command structure is already positioned at Syrian armed forces headquarters in Damascus. Also available to Tehran is an Iraqi Shiite militia, the Mehdi Army of the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, a good personal friend both of Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Assad.
Saturday, there was widespread speculation that Tehran would do its utmost to rescue the Syrian ruler who only recently opened the port of Latakia for an Iranian base.

Giving Hizballah a foothold in Syria is more complicated given the unstated competition between him and the Syrian ruler and the latter’s reservations about the former’s rising military strength and effective secret and terrorist capabilities. Assad would undoubtedly take into account that once Hizballah gained a foothold in Syria, it would be hard to dislodge.

Putting the fate of the Assad regime in the hands of radical Palestinian organizations would be equally imprudent and, worse, a humiliation.

It would give Palestinians their second open door to an Arab uprising, the first of which gave Hamas undreamed of leverage in Egypt.

Assad may even stage an attack on Israel as a desperate diversionary tactic from his trouble

Assad’s looming downfall?.

In southern Syria, the uprising against President Bashar Assad is continuing. On Wednesday, six people, including a doctor from a prominent local family, were killed when the security forces entered the Omari mosque in Daraa. Later in the day, security forces fired live ammunition at people protesting these killings, leading to a number of additional deaths. Thursday’s death toll was far higher. Accurate figures for the number now killed in Daraa are impossible to obtain.

Following the killings in the mosque, the Assad regime’s official media began to spread a somewhat surreal version of events. The official Sana news agency quoted an “official source” as saying an “armed gang” had attacked a medical team in an ambulance near the mosque. The armed gang, according to the source, was also responsible for the stockpiling of weaponry in the Omari mosque.

Sana noted the determination of the security forces to continue their pursuit of “the armed gangs which terrify civilians, and execute killings.” The report went on to note that “more than 1 million SMS” messages had been sent out – “mostly from Israel” – which were “inciting” Syrian citizens to use the mosques as launch pads for riots. Sana’s official source also noted that SMS messages had been sent to Syrian citizens abroad threatening to kill them if they reported the crimes of the armed gangs. So far, so bizarre.

THE CLUMSY propaganda of the regime’s mouthpieces at first glance might seem to have something pathetic about it. The “Syria Revolution 2011” page is on Facebook, updating every few minutes with fluent, impassioned messages.

News and rumors of events in Banias, Aleppo, Deraa and its surrounding villages spread across the globe at the touch of a button. The most that the Assad regime can manage by way of information warfare, meanwhile, is this absurd, clunky, Ceausescu-style finger pointing.

Talking to Syrian oppositionists, the sense that the Assad regime is running out of options is indeed very strong. Some say the prospect of a “Hama rules” style bloodbath is now simply a bogeyman, a bluff on the part of a regime running out of steam. One veteran member of Syrian’s exiled opposition noted that the people of Syria had lost their fear. This meant the fall of the Assad regime could now only be a matter of time, whatever measures it took.

Despite the undoubted aesthetic inferiority of the Assad regime’s information campaigns, however, it would be a major mistake to start dusting off the eulogies for the Alawite/Ba’athist family dictatorship in Damascus just yet.

This may be the first time Bashar Assad has faced concerted internal opposition, but it is not the first time his regime has looked on the ropes. In 2004, when the Americans entered Baghdad, there were many who predicted the demise of the Assad family regime.

Syria was forced into a humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005.

What followed was a deft campaign by Syria of ruthless political violence, mobilization of proxies, intimidation and burgeoning alliance with Iran which has led, five years later, to a resurgence by the regime, riding high for the last two years. Assad did not accept what looked like the verdict of history in 2004/5. There is no reason to suppose he will meekly do so now.

The “toolbox” the Syrian regime utilized in the 2005-8 period served it well. It still possesses it. This same box of tricks is the common property of the various members of the Iran-led Muqawama (resistance) bloc in the region, which includes the Hamas enclave in Gaza, Hezbollah’s Lebanon and Iran itself.

Recent events suggest that this set of options is currently being utilized by various members of this bloc to telling effect. Its members believe these methods will not only succeed in insulating them from any internal fallout from the Arab spring, but will also enable them to press forward, making gains from enemies weakened by the internal dissent.

The Iranian hyperactivity of recent weeks fits this pattern – the weapons ships, the convoys in Sudan, the arms-laden planes intercepted on their way to Syria.

Hamas, too, appears to want to change the subject of the conversation in Gaza by provoking a new fight with Israel.

This is the camp of which Assad is a part. These are its methods.

There has even been speculation on Arabic websites regarding a possible Syrian angle to the bombing in Jerusalem. Islamic Jihad and the smaller secular terror groups are domiciled in Damascus, after all. And Syria, too, has an interest right now in changing the subject of regional focus.

Impossible to know, of course. But not impossible.

SEEN FROM this point of view, the events and messages of the week in Syria no longer look quite so anachronistic. The killings in the Omari mosque are serving to slowly spread an atmosphere of tension and fear across the town.

Sana’s absurd explanations only add to the sense of strangeness and slightly unhinged ambiguity which is the Syrian regime’s natural element.

The “strategy of tension” brought the Assad regime back from the doldrums after 2005. Not all at once, but over time. Proxies, provocations, the artful application of sudden violence, ambiguity, military activity disguised as politics, politics disguised as military activity. This is what the Syrian regime does. This is what the regional alliance of which it is a part does. And is doing. And is gaining from. The notion that there is only Hama-style massacres or the victory of Facebook revolution is simplistic.

There is another set of rules by which Syria, Hamas, Iran and their friends operate. Call them Muqawama rules.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Gloria Center, IDC Herzliya. His book The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel- Islamist Conflict was published in 2010.

Security and Defense: When deterrence erodes.

In March 2009, two months after Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip ended, Maj.- Gen. Tal Russo, head of the IDF Operations Directorate, claimed that Israel had defeated Palestinian terrorism. For a while.

“We are in a state of victory today against Palestinian terrorism, although this type of victory is always temporary,” Russo said according to the book Let the IDF Win, published in 2010, on the second intifada. “This does not mean that the current situation will last for another two years, since such victories need to be achieved all the time.”

It is two years later and Russo was right. The only change is that he is no longer head of the Operations Directorate. Today, he is head of Southern Command, in charge of maintaining the temporary victory against terrorism, in order to prevent, for as long as possible, another largescale operation in the Gaza Strip.

Russo stands out among his colleagues on the General Staff. He is the only bachelor and the only general in IDF history to become an officer without going to Bahad 1, Officer’s Training School.

Russo grew up in Kibbutz Haluta in the North and remembers as a teenager during the Yom Kippur War watching four Syrian MiGs get shot down by the air force. In 1978, he was drafted and served in the special forces. He left the army, traveled around South America and the US for about two years working as a mover and a truck driver and then returned to the IDF, this time for good.

Russo is a no-nonsense general who tends to analyze situations in what appear to be black-and-white terms. During his years as head of the Operations Directorate, he was a lone, ignored voice within the top IDF command who believed that more needed to be done to stop Hezbollah’s military buildup, possibly to the point of taking preemptive action.

SINCE THE escalation in the Gaza Strip, Russo has used the term “cannon talk” to describe the type of dialogue Israel has with Hamas and to explain the Ping-Pong type of attacks between terror groups in the Strip and the IDF.

This recent round of hostilities has had several triggers which lead Hamas to claim that Israel is actually the one escalating the situation. First, were the reports that Israel had abducted Gaza engineer and alleged Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi from Ukraine and that he is in Israel undergoing interrogations.

Next, was Israel’s decision last Wednesday – in a rare move – to strike a manned Hamas position in the middle of the day in retaliation for an earlier rocket strike. Two Hamas operatives were killed.

While Israel has struck at Hamas targets in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead, it has rarely done so against manned positions. The idea was to send a message to Hamas that Israel viewed it responsible even though its operatives were not the ones firing the rockets, but not to kill its men so it would not have a pretext to join the fighting.

Yet that is exactly what the Wednesday strike did and on Saturday the Hamas response came swiftly with a downpour of 50 mortar shells – about a quarter of the entire amount fired last year – on bases and towns along the Gaza border.

The IDF responded to the attack by bombing additional targets in Gaza, including a tunnel being dug under the border, killing several more operatives.

From this point, the path was paved to an all-out confrontation, with daily rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. Wednesday’s bombing in Jerusalem – while not yet clear if directly connected to Gaza – was a demonstration this war is being fought on multiple fronts simultaneously.

The situation, though, is far more complex.

While Hamas did fire mortar shells on Saturday, it has refrained from firing rockets deep into the country. The Katyusha rockets that slammed into Beersheba, Ashdod and Ashkelon this week were fired by Islamic Jihad.

While to some, there might not be a difference between mortar attacks near the border and Katyusha attacks on cities, Hamas has reason to make a distinction.

Today it is a three-headed monster, with its leadership split between the political echelon in the Gaza Strip led by Ismail Haniyeh, the diplomatic echelon in Damascus led by Khaled Mashaal and the military forces in the Gaza Strip led by Ahmed Jabari.

Hamas fighters are frustrated at not being able to fight for two years, during which they have obtained new weaponry – longrange rockets, antiaircraft missiles and antitank weapons. They are not allowed to use them.

By allowing mortar fire, Jabari was letting his fighters vent their frustration. By preventing them from firing long-range missiles, he is sending a message that he does not yet want a full-fledged confrontation.

WHILE THE investigation into the bus bombing in Jerusalem continues, the IDF is already reviewing possible mistakes that might have led to the attack. The quiet in the West Bank in recent years has led to the lifting of close to 30 manned checkpoints, the withdrawal of some IDF forces from the territories and a drop in the number of arrest operations in Palestinian towns and cities.

These are all calculated risks, taken in an effort to bolster the Palestinian Authority and in recognition of its fight against Hamas and terrorism.

But, at the same time, fewer operations mean less intelligence. Without having boots on the ground inside the cities, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) are going to have difficulty gathering information.

IDF ASSESSMENTS are that it is unlikely Hamas was directly involved in the Jerusalem attack. It was more likely carried out by Islamic Jihad, possibly with the assistance of Hamas infrastructure in places like Hebron, where it is known to have a significant presence. Another possibility is that the attack was carried out by east Jerusalem residents who could or could not be connected to a more established terror group.

According to a senior officer in the Southern Command, Hamas is not yet ready for another operation like Cast Lead and is still working on improving its offensive capabilities and command-and-control systems, a lesson from 2009 when its fighters fled in the absence of clear instructions and leadership.

Israel’s claim that Hamas is responsible for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip makes for good rhetoric but is not necessarily the case.

While Hamas has been using the time since Cast Lead to rehabilitate its capabilities, Islamic Jihad has used the time to gain independence and to hoard advanced weaponry that enables it to challenge Hamas’s authority.

If during Cast Lead, Islamic Jihad fought mostly under Hamas command, in a future conflict it will have its own units and field commanders. It is already known to have an arsenal of long-range Grad-model Katyusha rockets and it also might have some advanced antitank missiles.

The weaponry that was captured aboard the Victoria by the navy last week was destined for terrorist groups in Gaza, possibly Hamas and possibly Islamic Jihad.

There is no question that Israel’s deterrence, which has effectively staved off conflict since Cast Lead, is eroding. The challenge will be for the IDF to restore it and stave off a larger-scale conflict – if that is what the government wants.

Southern Command: ‘There is anarchy in Gaza and Hamas’.

Head of Southern Command Tal Russo said on Saturday that “there is anarchy in Gaza and Hamas.”

Russo toured the house in the Negev that was hit Friday night by a Kassam rocket and stated that “it is difficult now for Hamas to turn the wheel back.”

Late Friday night a Kassam rocket exploded in Eshkol Regional Council area, causing damage to one house but no injuries.

A local official said authorities were searching for a second rocket that had fallen in an open area.

On Thursday, a rocket fired from Gaza exploded north of Ashdod. While there were no injuries, Magen David Adom crew treated a number of people for shock.

Earlier Friday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that he authorized the deployment of the Iron Dome missile defense system.

Speaking during a tour of the Gaza region, Barak said: “I authorized the IDF in the coming days to authorize the first operational deployment of Iron Dome batteries, here in the southern region.”

The test deployment, he said, “will continue for several weeks and the layout will vary with operational needs.”

The defense minister praised Iron Dome’s technology, calling it an “extraordinary development” by the defense industry. He cautioned, however, that it does not provide a 100 percent solution to the rocket threat.

The Iron Dome system will be part of the IDF’s solution to the barrage of rockets fired into southern Israel from Gaza in the last week, a statement from the IDF spokesperson said.

Iron Dome is designed to defend against rockets at a range of 4-70 km and each battery consists of a multi-mission radar manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries and three launchers, each equipped with 20 interceptors named Tamir.

The defense minister also praised the IDF’s operations in the southern region. “The IDF is doing a very good job – very professional and creative, with [good] results, along the border and in the Gaza Strip itself,” he said.

“Terror organizations in the Strip took a hard hit during the last 10 days,” Barak said, adding that the groups had lost fighters during that period.

He noted that “some 100 rockets and mortars  that reached communities further [from the Strip] than usual” were hit, including Beersheba, Ashdod, Sderot, Ashkelon, and the Gaza border-region communities. “We have no intention to allow terrorist organizations to renew the situation and breaking the status quo,” he said. The defense minister added, “We will act as it is needed to return the operations back to the [border] line itself.”

“I don’t recommend to Hamas or Islamic Jihad to attempt and return us to the situation when [rockets] were fired at areas deep into the country and at communities in the border region.”

Thousands of Syrian mourners burn Baath party buildings.

DAMASCUS – Thousands of mourners at a funeral for a Syrian killed in anti-government protests burned a ruling Baath party building and a police station on Saturday as authorities freed 260 prisoners in a bid to placate reformists.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was facing the deepest crisis of his 11 years in power after security forces fired on protesters on Friday, adding to a death toll that rights groups have said now numbers in the dozens.

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Assad pledges new rights as 20,000 march for 37 dead

Mosques across Deraa announced the names of “martyrs” whose funerals would be held in the southern city and on Saturday hundreds were gathering in the main square chanting for freedom.

Three bare-chested young men climbed onto the rubble of a statue of late President Hafez al-Assad, which protesters pulled down on Friday in a scene that recalled the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Iraq in 2003 by US troops.

A witness said they had cardboard signs reading “the people want the downfall of the regime”, a refrain heard in uprisings across the Arab world from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen.

In nearby Tafas, mourners in the funeral procession of Kamal Baradan, who was killed on Friday in Deraa, set fire to the Baath party building and the police station, residents said.

A human rights lawyer said on Saturday that 260 prisoners, mostly Islamists, had been released after completing at least three-quarters of their sentences.

Dozens of people have been killed over the past week around the southern city of Deraa, medical officials said. There were reports of more than 20 new deaths on Friday.

But the unrest came to a head after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti inspired by slogans used by other pro-democracy demonstrators abroad.

Amnesty International put the death toll in and around Deraa in the past week at 55 at least. Shops reopened in Deraa on Saturday, and security forces were not in evidence.

Amnesty on Syria: 55 protesters believed killed in Deraa.

Human rights group Amnesty International said on Friday at least 55 people are believed to have been killed since protests erupted in and around the southern Syrian city of Deraa a week ago.

“Security forces again opened fire on protesters in al-Sanamayn and carried out arrests in Damascus, according to reports on Friday, a day after the authorities pledged to investigate the violence,” Amnesty said in a statement.

Protests spread across Syria on Friday, challenging the rule of the Assad family after their forces killed dozens of demonstrators in the south.

In the southern city of Deraa, which has been in revolt for a week, gunfire and tear gas scattered a crowd of thousands after people lit a fire under a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad, whose son Bashar has ruled since his death in 2000.

Al Jazeera aired comments by a man who said security forces had killed 20 people on Friday in the nearby town of Sanamein.

In the Mouadamieh district of Damascus, security forces killed three people after a crowd confronted a procession of cars driven by supporters of President Bashsar al-Assad, residents said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian information minister said the situation in the country is calm, al-Arabiya television reported.

“The situation is completely calm in all parts of the country, the television station quoted Information Minister Muhsin Bilal as saying.

It was not clear when he was speaking.

The United States also weighed in on the situation in Syria, calling on the Syrian government to stop violence against demonstrators and the arrests of human rights activists, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Friday.

“We strongly condemn the Syrian government’s attempts to repress and intimidate demonstrators,” he told reporters.

In Hama, in the center of the country, where the elder Assad put down an Islamist revolt in 1982 at a cost of many thousands of lives, residents said people streamed through the streets after weekly prayers chanting “Freedom is ringing out!” — a slogan heard in uprisings sweeping the rest of the Arab world.

The same chant had earlier marked funeral processions in Deraa for some of the at least 37 people killed on Wednesday, when security agents attacked pro-democracy groups at a mosque. In all, 44 deaths have been reported in the past week in Deraa.

Security men, on alert across the country during weekly prayers at mosques, quickly stifled a small demonstration in the capital Damascus. They hauled away dozens among a crowd of some 200 who chanted their support for people of Deraa.

In Tel, near Damascus, about 1,000 people rallied and chanted slogans calling relatives of Assad “thieves”.

Deraa violence

In Deraa itself, a bastion of the Sunni majority which resents the power and wealth amassed by the Alawite elite around Assad, a Reuters correspondent saw thousands rally unchallenged until the sound of heavy gunfire sent them running for cover.

Unrest in Deraa came to a head this week after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti against the government. In Damascus, a couple of protests by a few dozen people shouting slogans were broken up last week.

Among the targets of the crowd’s anger on Friday was Maher al-Assad, a brother of the president and head of the Republican Guard, a special security force, and Rami Makhlouf, a cousin who runs big businesses and is accused by Washington of corruption.

Allied with Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran against the Western powers and neighboring Israel, Assad’s Syria sits at the heart of a complex web of conflict in the Middle East.

His anti-Israel stance has protected him against some of the criticism aimed, for example, at Egypt’s deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, who defended a peace treaty with the Jewish state.

Demonstrators in Deraa turned that hostility to Israel against the government on Friday, highlighting the use of force against them and the failure of the Assads to take back the Golan Heights.

“Maher, you coward!” they chanted. “Send your troops to liberate the Golan!”

In Deraa, before the Friday midday prayers which are the high point of social interaction in much of the Arab world, a procession of cars coursed through the streets honking horns and raising pictures of the president. There were also pro-Assad congregations in other parts of the city.

Minarets in Deraa echoed throughout the morning with the calls of imams to the faithful to attend funerals of some of the civilians killed, most of them when security forces fired on demonstrators in the mainly Sunni Muslim city on Wednesday.

A Facebook page called Syrian Revolution called on people to gather on the “Friday of Dignity” after prayers, “in all mosques, in all provinces, in the biggest squares”.

Bashar al-Assad promised on Thursday to look into granting Syrians greater freedoms in an attempt to defuse the outbreak of popular demands for political freedoms and an end to corruption.

He also pledged to look at ending an emergency law in place since 1963 and made an offer of large public pay rises.

Syrian security forces pulled out on Thursday from the mosque where several people were killed. People later converged on the mosque to celebrate its “liberation”, setting off fireworks and honking car horns.

Why a New Gaza War is Possible, But Unlikely – Global Spin – TIME.com.

In a conflict that has raged for 63 years, all violence can be termed “retaliation”. Israeli warplanes and tanks pound targets inside the densely populated Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza in response to the dozens of rockets and mortars fired by militants over the past ten days; Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other smaller Palestinian factions fire rockets and mortars in the general direction of Israeli towns and kibbutzim citing the assassination of their fighters – 17 in the last month, one Hamas man told TIME this week. The first shots were fired so long ago that it’s usually the other side’s most recent ones that each side reaches for to explain their own.

But “retaliation”  offers a rationalization rather than an explanation for any outbreak of violence over the Israel-Gaza boundary fence. Even in exchanges of fire that both sides know they can’t “win” in any traditional sense of the term, Clausewitz’s logic still applies: “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”

So, while the logic of retaliation – not simply revenge, but deterrence through making the other side pay a price for the latest attack – always has the potential, as some Israeli commentators warn to spiral in into an escalation that both sides have good reason to avoid, right now, it’s the political calculations of the various players on both sides that will determine whether the advent of Spring will bring a new war in Gaza — or a relatively rapid return to the unwritten cease-fire arrangement that has prevailed since the last Israeli invasion of Gaza ended in February of 2009.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defiance of Israel’s closest Western allies over ongoing construction of settlements on occupied territory has left Israel in its most diplomatically isolated position in two decades. Another major military operation along the lines  of the 2008/9 Operation Cast Lead — which, like that  one, would inevitably inflict heavy civilian casualties on the Palestinian side — is more likely to deepen that isolation than to break it. But Netanyahu’s domestic political rivals both on the right and the center of the spectrum are chiding him to respond with greater aggression, particularly after Wednesday’s terror attack in Jerusalem — which Israelis believe was not the work of Hamas — and Thursday’s Grad rocket attacks by Islamic Jihad that landed near the Israeli city of Ashdod.

Hoping to avoid another disastrous war in Gaza — for which Kadima leader Tzipi Livni has been agitating this week — left-wing Israeli analyst Dimi Reider
found himself unusually inclined to praise Netanyahu: “I still prefer a weak right-wing government that needs to prove it’s responsible to a strong centrist government that needs to prove it’s tough,” Reider told me. “Olmert and Livni would’ve been halfway through demolishing Gaza by now. But Bibi could still prove me wrong by the weekend, if people are actually killed by the rocket fire.”

For now, Netanyahu appears set on resisting domestic political pressure for escalation, vowing on Wednesday to act “assertively, responsibly and intelligently to preserve the quiet and security that has prevailed in the south over the last two years”.

The “quiet and security” of which he speaks, of course, relies on Hamas both refraining from mounting its own attacks, but also restraining rival factions such as Islamic Jihad from using Gaza to stage attacks. So, Netanyahu is in effect vowing to act responsibly to restore a de facto cease-fire with Hamas.

Curiously enough, some Israeli military correspondents put some of the blame for the recent escalation on their own side. Yediot Ahronot’s Alex Fishman, for example, said that while the IDF leadership’s insistence that it doesn’t want an escalation is negated by ongoing assassinations of key personnel on the other side: “A targeted killing is not just another step in an uncontrolled deteriorating spiral,” he wrote in Thursday’s Hebrew-language edition. “It is a clear evidence of a planned escalation.”

And Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff write in Haaretz that Hamas “actually has good reasons to believe that Israel is the one heating up the southern front. It began with a bombardment a few weeks ago that disrupted the transfer of a large amount of money from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, continued with the interrogation of engineer and Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi in Israel [ed. note: Abu Sisi, the engineer in charge of the main electrical power station in Gaza, has been held in Israel after being abducted in Ukraine], and ended with last week’s bombing of a Hamas training base in which two Hamas militants were killed.”

They note that following the weekend fusillade, Hamas refrained from firing as Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday even after Israeli mortar fire accidentally killed four Palestinian civilians on Tuesday, and also that Hamas leaders in Gaza are trying to convince Islamic Jihad to stop their escalation — although meeting little success there, it seems, given Thursday’s Grad strikes.

Islamic Jihad, of course, is a more militant rival to Hamas, and is widely viewed as the Palestinian group closest to Iran. Their interests, of course, are not necessarily the same as those of Hamas.

There was a time when sudden spikes in attacks on Israel were deemed to be efforts to “derail the peace process”, but that train long ago ran out of track and ground to a halt. The political calculations in Gaza may be more domestic. It’s possible that Islamic Jihad, and perhaps some more militant members of Hamas, are leery of efforts to broker a Palestinian unity government agreement between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. That’s an increasingly popular call coming from a protest movement, in both Gaza and the West Bank, inspired by the democratic rebellion sweeping the Arab world. But any such agreement would further constrain the ability of more militant elements to implement an independent strategic agenda. And a more democratically accountable Palestinian politics would also diminish the authority enjoyed by those responsible for running the armed wings of the various factions.

Some analysts even suggested that last weekend’s rocket fire resulted from an internal rift in the Hamas leadership over an invitation by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to President Abbas to visit Gaza, that was apparently issued without consulting Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus. Even then, the fusillade of rocket fire was intended to be symbolic, rather than part of a Hamas plan to spark an escalation.

The problem, as Harel and Ischaroff note, is that while the main players have reason to avoid an escalation, they may not be able to entirely control it: “It seems Israel wants to strike the last blow in this round and then declare a halt,” they write. “The concern is that Islamic Jihad will refuse to play by Israel’s rules.”

And, as Reider notes, should the rocket fire from Gaza actually inflict casualties in Israel, Netanyahu’s political calculations would change. The deeper problem on the Gaza-Israel boundary is a political one, but it goes beyond domestic politics and cuts to the core of a 63-year-old conflict to which there is no military solution.

UPDATE: The International Crisis Group, for whose analyses I have the utmost respect, warns in an urgent briefing that despite the intention of both Hamas and the Israeli government to avoid an escalation, they could nonetheless find themselves carried along by its momentum in the context of the volatile regional situation. “Israelis’ anxiety is rising and with it the fear that outside parties might seek to provoke hostilities to divert attention from domestic problems and shift the focus back to Israel,” the ICG writes. “Hamas has been emboldened by regional events and is therefore less likely to back down from a challenge. The combination, as recent days have shown, has proven combustible.” And, they warn, the two sides appeared to be trying to avoid an escalation before the 2008 invasion, too: “As in the weeks preceding Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack on Gaza that commenced in December 2008, neither Hamas nor Israel seems intent on provoking an intensified or extended conflict. But the combination of civilian casualties, regional events and continued paralysis of Palestinian politics has created the conditions for a rapid deterioration toward the kind of clash to which neither side aspires, for which both have carefully prepared and from which they will not retreat quickly.” Their solution: Urgent international efforts to broker an effective cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, rather than the unspoken and easily transgressed arrangements currently in place. Couldn’t agree more: Pretending Israel can achieve any kind of peace without talking to Hamas has proven in the past to be a dangerous delusion.

Barak: Iron Dome missile defense system to be deployed next week – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The deployment of the missile defense system comes in response to heightened shelling and rockets launched from Gaza to Israel in the past week.

By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

Israel is deploying its newly developed Iron Dome missile defense system for the first time to protect southern Israeli communities from Palestinian attacks from Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces announced Friday.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave the order Friday after a week in which Gaza militants fired dozens of mortar shells and rockets at Israel, which retaliated with air strikes.

	Ehud Barak and Benny Gantz meet with IDF officials, March 25, 2011.
	Photo by: Haaretz

Barak says he approved the deployment of the system as an operational experiment and the IDF has said it will be operational in a few days.

In a meeting with the IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and other defense officials, he praised the military’s reaction to heightened rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, saying “in the last ten days, the terror organizations in Gaza have been hit hard and lost 11 militants.”

He lamented the loss of civilian life in the strikes, but said that “it is not Israel’s intent to allow terror organizations to renew their efforts to break our routine,” saying that Israel will do whatever necessary to restore order.

Barak warned Hamas and other terror organizations of the consequences of further firing into Israel, saying that although the past 24 hours have been rocket-free, Israel is continuing to follow the situation closely.

The defense minister said he authorized the experimental deployment of Iron Dome, which will in all likelihood be in use initially for several weeks. He added that the mode and scope of deployment will be in accordance with the security situation in the South.

The system is a main component of Israel’s defense against the homemade and imported rockets fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza, as well as the longer range rockets in the hands of Hezbollah guerrillas on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

Barak made clear that Iron Dome will be used in the event missiles are shot into the area in which it will be deployed, but the full deployment of the missile defense system will only be feasible in a few years’ time.