Israel's air strike will strengthen the hand of the Damascus old guard

[Classical_Liberal]

(Personal Note)It appears the terrorists bases were abandoned. I guess pre-emptive strike is code of striking phoney targets.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1056791,00.html

The painful truths that now confront Syria's reformists

Israel's air strike will strengthen the hand of the Damascus old guard

David Hirst
Monday October 6, 2003
The Guardian

Fadil Shururu, chief political officer of Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, has come a long way since I first met him 35 years ago in Jordan's Ghor valley, seedbed of the guerrilla movement that aimed to liberate the Palestinian land lost in 1948. Syria's Ba'athist regime was then its militant Arab backer. But now he could not even receive me in his office, coming instead to my hotel. For the PFLP-GC is one of four Palestinian "terrorist" organisations whose Damascus branch the US has called on Syria to shut down.

In the case of the inactive PFLP-GC, Syrian acquiescence seems to have been cosmetic, though more substantive in the case of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose alleged training camp - actually, it seems, a disused PFLP-GC camp near the village of Ain al-Saheb, where some Palestinians may live - Israel claimed to have struck yesterday.