EDITORIAL: Syria may no longer be on international radar, but it is still in the grips of a conflict. At least 15 people were killed, including two women, and many others were wounded, some critically, in an Israeli air strike early Sunday morning on a residential area in the heart of Syrian capital Damascus and missiles landing in its surrounding suburbs.
Also, head of the Syrian antiquities department has been quoted as saying historic buildings near the medieval Damascus citadel were “severally damaged by an Israeli missile”.
A chorus of denunciations from the Western countries would have followed had this happened in Tel Aviv or some other Israeli city, but not a single word of sympathy for the Syrian victims, let alone censure of the aggressor which is also in occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights.
In fact, reports quoting reliable sources say Israel carried out the latest strikes on the basis of intelligence provided by the US for warehouses used for storage of Iranian weapons.
Since the 2011 pro-democracy movement in that country was hijacked by certain outside powers turning it into a civil war, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against Syria. Just last month, four people including two soldiers were killed, when an Israeli missile hit the Damascus International Airport.
The latest attack, as pointed out by those following the developments, is part of an escalation aimed at targeting not only against the Syrian military but also its allies, Iran and Hezbollah who came to help President Bashar al- Assad regime during the civil war.
According to the UK- based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Sunday’s strike was “the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital” since the civil war began, and that some of the missiles hit a warehouse used by Iranian and Hezbollah fighters.
A semi-official Iranian news agency, Tasnim, however said none of its citizens was harmed, adding that the strike hit “exactly the spot” where Hezbollah’s senior command Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a 2008 car bombing.
Civil war that claimed the lives of some half a million people and displaced nearly half of Syria’s population from their homes has ended, but the humanitarian crisis it created persists.
Although President Assad is back in business normalising relations with leaders of some important Arab countries as well as Turkey - which had actively supported the opposition through the civil war - but his country has become a battle ground between proxies of regional and outside powers.
Israel and its Western backers are engaged in a shadow war against what is known as the ‘Axis of Resistance’ comprising Syria, Iran, Lebanese group Hezbollah, and militant Palestinian nationalist organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
It is a low-intensity conflict that threatens to undermine the regional stability and upset the strategic balance in the Middle East those powers are trying to preserve.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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