Syria's foreign minister stated unambiguously that in the event of an attack by Israel, Syria would enter the Lebanese conflict on the side of Hezbollah.

The parallels between August 1914 -- when European powers were sucked into the vortex of the first World War -- and August 2006 continue to mount. Hezbollah, a terrorist group by any rational definition, is an ally of Hamas, the elected government of the Palestine Authority, and another certifiable terrorist group. When Israel launched retaliatory action against Hamas earlier this summer following an attack on an Israeli border post, Hezbollah began attacks against Israel.
 
This led to the long-planned Israeli incursion into Lebanon to punish Hezbollah. The Israeli campaign, as was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago, was actually laid out over a year ago. In this it somewhat resembles the Schlieffen Plan of the German High Command, in which German troops invaded neutral Belgium as a means of striking hard and fast at France, taking them out of the war before Russia could mobilize and thereby avoid fighting on two fronts. That plan, of course, didn't work, and Germany's invasion of "poor little Belgium" (which, although the victim of an unprovoked invasion, was ruled by a colonial government that was anything but innocent) turned public opinion against the Kaiser and his government.
 
Hezbollah is allied to Syria and Iran; earlier this year, Syria and Iran, concerned about the prospect of a U.S. attack entered into a limited alliance. This is a remarkable development, given that Syria - like Iraq under Saddam - is ruled by a secularist Ba'ath socialist party dictatorship, while Iran is ruled by a revolutionary Shi'ite theocracy. But the U.S under George W. Bush has been a very creative diplomatic match-maker, inspiring the unlikeliest couplings of convenience between long-time enemies; witness the emergence, in "liberated" Iraq, of a Sunni-Shi'ite coalition that is volubly opposed to Israel and seeks the withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces.

Follow this link for the complete article, "Syria Preparing to Enter Lebanese Conflict":
 
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1141692006

Follow this link for the complete article, "Syria Preparing to Enter Lebanese Conflict":
 
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1141692006