Israel-Syria: Will Their Tensions Lead to War in Lebanon?

After the exchange of threatening statements between Israeli and Syrian officials this week, Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman continued his bombardment in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 news:

I don't work for the media or for public opinion. My response, which was made to clarify that the situation is unacceptable, was immediately met with hysteria in Israel: 'How dare we annoy the tyrant?' I am sorry about this habit of the left in Israel. I think that in the Middle East serious things should not be left unanswered.

Israel & Syria: Different Political Calculations, Different Conclusions

On Saturday, Saudi daily Al-Okaz reported, from senior Lebanese sources, that Hezbollah has announced emergency readiness because of the possibility of an Israeli operation amidst the growing tensions between Syria and Israel.

The official Syrian newspaper Tishreen said that "whichever path Israel chooses, it will find Syria prepared for either peace or war". In Israel, Haaretz's Aluf Benn warned that the continuing tension will draw Israel and Syria to a war in the region.

Comments

[Publicola]

In memory of the capture of the Syrian Golan Heights:

The Syrian Golan Heights were captured by Israel on 9–10 June 1967 in the course of the Six-Day War.
In 1997, years after Dayan, the Israeli Defense minister during the Six-Day War, died, an Israeli journalist, Rami Tal, published conversations he had with Dayan in 1976.
In that conversation Dayan claimed that 80 percent of the cross-border clashes between Israel and Syria in the years before the war were a result of Israeli provocation :

»I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.«

»I made a mistake in allowing the Israel conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time [fourth day of the war].«

Dayan also portrayed the desire of the residents in the Kibutzim beneath the Golan Heights that they be captured as stemming from the desire for their agricultural land and not primarily for security reasons.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan#Six_Day_War_.281967.29

[Old Outsider]

Some more articles:
Syria: We're ready for peace, but also for war
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147852.html

Israeli Minister Adds Heat to Exchange With Syria
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/world/middleeast/05mideast.html?ref=world

[Norm]

Visit the Golan Heights. Just to control the water was enough of a reason to take them. Besides the water, just get on top of them and you know it has tremendous military importance....especially for the
military era of the sixties. This is a stupid issue considering the weapons being handed to Hezbollah today.