During his meeting with a Palestinian leader yesterday, Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam said that the policy pursued by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon aims to ignite the flames of war in the region. A statement issued by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said that Khaddam, who met with the Front’s Secretary General Nayef Hawatimah, warned against “Sharon’s aggressive policy of igniting war in the Middle East,” stressing that “Syria will defend itself.”
The Damascus-based front confirmed that Khaddam and Hattameh discussed “the policy of Sharon’s government… of aggression against Lebanon and Syria to extend the fire into a regional war.”
On July 1, Israeli planes attacked a Syrian radar station east of Beirut, injuring two Syrian soldiers and a Lebanese soldier, in response to the Lebanese Hezbollah carrying out an operation in the Shebaa Farms occupied by Israel two days earlier and demanding that Lebanon regain sovereignty over it.
This is the second Israeli operation against Syrian positions in Lebanon in less than three months.
