Netanyahu condemns Syria as U.S. mulls no-fly zone
Feb 27, 2012 15:04:54 GMT -5
Post by PrisonerOfHope on Feb 27, 2012 15:04:54 GMT -5
Netanyahu condemns Syria, as U.S. mulls imposing no-fly zone
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss developments in Syria with Canadian, American leaders next week • Violence continues as Syria votes on new constitution • Report: U.S. considers imposing no-fly zone over Syria to aid humanitarian relief.
Daniel Siryoti, Yoni Hirsch, Eli Leon, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rebuked the Syrian regime for what he called the “deplorable massacres being perpetrated against innocent civilians” during the months-long crackdown against anti-government protesters, referring specifically to the mounting death toll in recent days in the restive city of Homs.
Netanyahu made his remarks at the weekly Cabinet meeting, saying that the Middle East is undergoing a “rapid and turbulent transformation” and that the bloodshed in Syria is a testament to the political turmoil engulfing the region.
Forces loyal to Assad killed at least 100 people in Syria on Saturday in a fourth week of bombardments on the central city of Homs and assaults on towns and villages in northern and southern provinces, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said.
Six women and 10 children were among those killed, the opposition activists’ organization, which documents what it describes as killings by loyalist forces, said in a statement. It added that the dead included 44 people in Homs and the surrounding countryside, which has sustained shelling for more than three weeks.
Netanyahu, who has so far stopped short of endorsing any specific action vis-a-vis Syria, said that he would discuss the latest developments there during his meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama next week. He also said confronting Iran’s nuclear program would also top the agenda at those meetings.
Netanyahu made similar comments in a Cabinet meeting in early February, during which he noted that Israel must preserve its military and economic might if it is to survive in the region.
Meanwhile, explosions shook several embattled Syrian cities on Sunday before polls opened for a vote on a new constitution that could keep President Bashar al-Assad in power until 2028.
Human rights campaigners reported blasts in Homs, Hama, Deir al-Zor, Deraa and some smaller towns caught up in an almost year-long uprising against four decades of Assad family rule.
Violence continues across Syria as constitution vote begins
Syrian television said voting had begun in the referendum on a constitution which Assad says will lead to a multi-party parliamentary election in three months, but which his opponents see as a sick joke given the violence convulsing the country.
“No one is going to vote,” said activist Omar on Saturday from the rebel-held Baba Amro district of Homs, which Assad’s forces have bombarded and besieged for more than three weeks.
“This was a constitution made to Bashar’s tastes and meanwhile we are getting shelled and killed,” he said. “More than 40 people were killed today and you want us to vote?”
The Syrian government, backed by Russia, China and Iran, and undeterred by Western and Arab pressure to halt the carnage, says it is fighting foreign-backed “armed terrorist groups.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was still unable to evacuate distressed civilians from Baba Amro. After a day of talks with Syrian authorities and opposition fighters, it said there were “no concrete results.”
“We continue our negotiations, hoping that [on Sunday] we will be able to enter Baba Amro to carry out our life-saving operations,” spokesman Hicham Hassan said in Geneva.
Despite the violence in provincial cities across Syria, voting on the constitution went ahead in calmer areas.
If approved, it would drop an article making Assad’s Baath party the leader of state and society, allow political pluralism and enact a presidential limit of two seven-year terms.
But the limit will not be enforced retrospectively, meaning that Assad, already in power for 11 years, could serve another two terms after his current one expires in 2014.
Anti-Assad activists have called for a boycott of a vote they see as meaningless. They said they would try to hold protests near polling stations in Damascus and suburbs where troops drove out insurgents last month.
Some said security forces had stopped people venturing out to buy food in Homs on Saturday, confiscated their Interior Ministry-issued identification cards and informed them the cards could be retrieved at specified polling centers the next day.
This is Syria’s third referendum since Assad inherited power from his late father Hafez al-Assad. The first installed him as president in 2000 with an official 97.29 percent “yes” vote. The second renewed his term seven years later with 97.62% in favor.
Eligible voters will cast ballots on whether they approve or reject the recently drafted constitution that supposedly ends the ruling Baath party’s domination of politics since 1963. Most Syrian opposition groups are boycotting the vote, saying they will accept nothing less than Assad abandoning power.
Assad has vowed to hold parliamentary elections within 90 days if voters approve the new constitution. The document would drop an article making his Baath party the leader of state and society, allow for political pluralism and enact a presidential limit of two seven-year terms.
Report: U.S. working on pan to impose no-fly zone over Syria
Meanwhile, the U.S. is currently working on a plan to impose a no-fly zone over Syria to facilitate a humanitarian mission, the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat reported Saturday.
According to a senior U.S. military official quoted in the report, the plan calls for establishing an international buffer zone in northwestern Syria to allow unrestricted access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The area, to be effectively controlled by NATO forces arriving through Turkey, would serve as a refuge for the wounded and internally displaced persons (IDPs). For the plan to work, the official said, a no-fly zone would have to be imposed on Syrian airspace, not unlike the one enforced during NATO’s Kosovo campaign in 1999.
Western sources said that just as the NATO-led mission forced Serbian forces out of the contested region, a no-fly zone in Syria would similarly precipitate the fall of the Assad regime.
The report goes on to say that American officials are aware that Assad has, until now, stopped short of using all the air power at his disposal to crush the insurgents. If Assad reconsiders, it could deal a deadly blow to anti-government forces. They also noted that the U.S. does not expect China and Russia to budge in their opposition to a Security Council resolution that endorses international intervention.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton blasted Russia and China as “despicable” for opposing U.N. action aimed at stopping the bloodshed in Syria, and more than 60 nations have begun planning a civilian peacekeeping mission to deploy after the Damascus regime halts its crackdown on the opposition.
In his most forceful words to date on the Syrian crisis, President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. and its allies would use “every tool available” to end the bloodshed by Assad’s regime.
“It is time to stop the killing of Syrian citizens by their own government,” Obama said in Washington, adding that it “absolutely imperative for the international community to rally and send a clear message to President Assad that it is time for a transition. It is time for that regime to move on.”
Obama spoke as a group known as the "Friends of Syria," led by the U.S. and European and Arab nations, met in Tunisia in the latest efforts to halt the Assad regime’s nearly year-old suppression of an anti-government uprising.
The group’s actions are aimed at jolting Assad and his allies into accepting demands for a democratic transition, even as they are still unwilling to commit to military intervention.
While the Tunisia conference offered nothing other than the threat of increasing isolation and sanctions to compel compliance from Assad, Clinton went on to predict a military coup inside Syria of the kind that ended the old regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.
“We saw this happen in other settings last year, I think it is going to happen in Syria,” she told reporters at the end of the meeting. “We also know from many sources that there are people around Assad who are beginning to hedge their bets — they didn’t sign up to slaughter people.”
Assad allies Russia and China, which blocked U.N. action on Syria and are eager to head off any repeat of the kind of foreign intervention that happened in Libya, gave no sign they would agree to peacekeepers. Moscow and Beijing have vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans aimed at ending the conflict and condemning Assad’s crackdown.
Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and Galilee Ayoob Kara (Likud) told Israel Radio Sunday that he recently arranged a Skype conversation between Syrian rebels and the Chinese and Russian ambassadors stationed in Israel. According to Kara, the insurgents warned that China and Russia would be “prosecuted by the people of Syria and the world” after the fall of Assad because of their opposition to international intervention.
500 Arab Israelis, Druze hold pro-Assad rally in Haifa
Meanwhile, some 500 people gathered in Haifa on Saturday at the al-Midan Arabic-language theater to stage a pro-Assad rally. Some of the participants, the vast majority of whom hold key positions in the Arab-Israeli and Golan Heights’ Druze communities, donned shirts bearing images of Assad.
Druze MK Said Naffaa (National Democratic Assembly), former Arab MK Issam Makhoul and top officials from the Orthodox Christian community in Israel were also present.
Since Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War, Druze community leaders have taken pains to stress that they are still allied with Syria so as not to have their loyalty questioned should Israel return the disputed land as part of a peace deal.
As such, each year sees large rallies in support of the Assad regime. The rally on Saturday was unique in that it saw participation from Arab Israelis and others not living in the Golan Heights.
“What is taking place in Syria is the unfolding of a Western-Arab conspiracy,” one participant said. “We are voting for Bashar al-Assad, and against Israel.”
www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3276
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss developments in Syria with Canadian, American leaders next week • Violence continues as Syria votes on new constitution • Report: U.S. considers imposing no-fly zone over Syria to aid humanitarian relief.
Daniel Siryoti, Yoni Hirsch, Eli Leon, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rebuked the Syrian regime for what he called the “deplorable massacres being perpetrated against innocent civilians” during the months-long crackdown against anti-government protesters, referring specifically to the mounting death toll in recent days in the restive city of Homs.
Netanyahu made his remarks at the weekly Cabinet meeting, saying that the Middle East is undergoing a “rapid and turbulent transformation” and that the bloodshed in Syria is a testament to the political turmoil engulfing the region.
Forces loyal to Assad killed at least 100 people in Syria on Saturday in a fourth week of bombardments on the central city of Homs and assaults on towns and villages in northern and southern provinces, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said.
Six women and 10 children were among those killed, the opposition activists’ organization, which documents what it describes as killings by loyalist forces, said in a statement. It added that the dead included 44 people in Homs and the surrounding countryside, which has sustained shelling for more than three weeks.
Netanyahu, who has so far stopped short of endorsing any specific action vis-a-vis Syria, said that he would discuss the latest developments there during his meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama next week. He also said confronting Iran’s nuclear program would also top the agenda at those meetings.
Netanyahu made similar comments in a Cabinet meeting in early February, during which he noted that Israel must preserve its military and economic might if it is to survive in the region.
Meanwhile, explosions shook several embattled Syrian cities on Sunday before polls opened for a vote on a new constitution that could keep President Bashar al-Assad in power until 2028.
Human rights campaigners reported blasts in Homs, Hama, Deir al-Zor, Deraa and some smaller towns caught up in an almost year-long uprising against four decades of Assad family rule.
Violence continues across Syria as constitution vote begins
Syrian television said voting had begun in the referendum on a constitution which Assad says will lead to a multi-party parliamentary election in three months, but which his opponents see as a sick joke given the violence convulsing the country.
“No one is going to vote,” said activist Omar on Saturday from the rebel-held Baba Amro district of Homs, which Assad’s forces have bombarded and besieged for more than three weeks.
“This was a constitution made to Bashar’s tastes and meanwhile we are getting shelled and killed,” he said. “More than 40 people were killed today and you want us to vote?”
The Syrian government, backed by Russia, China and Iran, and undeterred by Western and Arab pressure to halt the carnage, says it is fighting foreign-backed “armed terrorist groups.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was still unable to evacuate distressed civilians from Baba Amro. After a day of talks with Syrian authorities and opposition fighters, it said there were “no concrete results.”
“We continue our negotiations, hoping that [on Sunday] we will be able to enter Baba Amro to carry out our life-saving operations,” spokesman Hicham Hassan said in Geneva.
Despite the violence in provincial cities across Syria, voting on the constitution went ahead in calmer areas.
If approved, it would drop an article making Assad’s Baath party the leader of state and society, allow political pluralism and enact a presidential limit of two seven-year terms.
But the limit will not be enforced retrospectively, meaning that Assad, already in power for 11 years, could serve another two terms after his current one expires in 2014.
Anti-Assad activists have called for a boycott of a vote they see as meaningless. They said they would try to hold protests near polling stations in Damascus and suburbs where troops drove out insurgents last month.
Some said security forces had stopped people venturing out to buy food in Homs on Saturday, confiscated their Interior Ministry-issued identification cards and informed them the cards could be retrieved at specified polling centers the next day.
This is Syria’s third referendum since Assad inherited power from his late father Hafez al-Assad. The first installed him as president in 2000 with an official 97.29 percent “yes” vote. The second renewed his term seven years later with 97.62% in favor.
Eligible voters will cast ballots on whether they approve or reject the recently drafted constitution that supposedly ends the ruling Baath party’s domination of politics since 1963. Most Syrian opposition groups are boycotting the vote, saying they will accept nothing less than Assad abandoning power.
Assad has vowed to hold parliamentary elections within 90 days if voters approve the new constitution. The document would drop an article making his Baath party the leader of state and society, allow for political pluralism and enact a presidential limit of two seven-year terms.
Report: U.S. working on pan to impose no-fly zone over Syria
Meanwhile, the U.S. is currently working on a plan to impose a no-fly zone over Syria to facilitate a humanitarian mission, the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat reported Saturday.
According to a senior U.S. military official quoted in the report, the plan calls for establishing an international buffer zone in northwestern Syria to allow unrestricted access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The area, to be effectively controlled by NATO forces arriving through Turkey, would serve as a refuge for the wounded and internally displaced persons (IDPs). For the plan to work, the official said, a no-fly zone would have to be imposed on Syrian airspace, not unlike the one enforced during NATO’s Kosovo campaign in 1999.
Western sources said that just as the NATO-led mission forced Serbian forces out of the contested region, a no-fly zone in Syria would similarly precipitate the fall of the Assad regime.
The report goes on to say that American officials are aware that Assad has, until now, stopped short of using all the air power at his disposal to crush the insurgents. If Assad reconsiders, it could deal a deadly blow to anti-government forces. They also noted that the U.S. does not expect China and Russia to budge in their opposition to a Security Council resolution that endorses international intervention.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton blasted Russia and China as “despicable” for opposing U.N. action aimed at stopping the bloodshed in Syria, and more than 60 nations have begun planning a civilian peacekeeping mission to deploy after the Damascus regime halts its crackdown on the opposition.
In his most forceful words to date on the Syrian crisis, President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. and its allies would use “every tool available” to end the bloodshed by Assad’s regime.
“It is time to stop the killing of Syrian citizens by their own government,” Obama said in Washington, adding that it “absolutely imperative for the international community to rally and send a clear message to President Assad that it is time for a transition. It is time for that regime to move on.”
Obama spoke as a group known as the "Friends of Syria," led by the U.S. and European and Arab nations, met in Tunisia in the latest efforts to halt the Assad regime’s nearly year-old suppression of an anti-government uprising.
The group’s actions are aimed at jolting Assad and his allies into accepting demands for a democratic transition, even as they are still unwilling to commit to military intervention.
While the Tunisia conference offered nothing other than the threat of increasing isolation and sanctions to compel compliance from Assad, Clinton went on to predict a military coup inside Syria of the kind that ended the old regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.
“We saw this happen in other settings last year, I think it is going to happen in Syria,” she told reporters at the end of the meeting. “We also know from many sources that there are people around Assad who are beginning to hedge their bets — they didn’t sign up to slaughter people.”
Assad allies Russia and China, which blocked U.N. action on Syria and are eager to head off any repeat of the kind of foreign intervention that happened in Libya, gave no sign they would agree to peacekeepers. Moscow and Beijing have vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans aimed at ending the conflict and condemning Assad’s crackdown.
Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and Galilee Ayoob Kara (Likud) told Israel Radio Sunday that he recently arranged a Skype conversation between Syrian rebels and the Chinese and Russian ambassadors stationed in Israel. According to Kara, the insurgents warned that China and Russia would be “prosecuted by the people of Syria and the world” after the fall of Assad because of their opposition to international intervention.
500 Arab Israelis, Druze hold pro-Assad rally in Haifa
Meanwhile, some 500 people gathered in Haifa on Saturday at the al-Midan Arabic-language theater to stage a pro-Assad rally. Some of the participants, the vast majority of whom hold key positions in the Arab-Israeli and Golan Heights’ Druze communities, donned shirts bearing images of Assad.
Druze MK Said Naffaa (National Democratic Assembly), former Arab MK Issam Makhoul and top officials from the Orthodox Christian community in Israel were also present.
Since Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War, Druze community leaders have taken pains to stress that they are still allied with Syria so as not to have their loyalty questioned should Israel return the disputed land as part of a peace deal.
As such, each year sees large rallies in support of the Assad regime. The rally on Saturday was unique in that it saw participation from Arab Israelis and others not living in the Golan Heights.
“What is taking place in Syria is the unfolding of a Western-Arab conspiracy,” one participant said. “We are voting for Bashar al-Assad, and against Israel.”
www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3276
