Reply #38: Syria won't respond... [View All]

except with increased aid to Hizbollah, perhaps.

They can't face the IAF by air, and they know that they're screwed politically as well as militarily if they try anything else.

Your point about this strike establishing (or perhaps re-establishing) a "right" of Israeli retaliation is a good one, but I don't think that it matters much to the greater population of Israel. They are the ones Sharon is trying to appease with this, IMO. A show of defiance to the international community is useful, but it seems a secondary motivation here.

Syria is firmly in the "enemy" camp already; I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it does seem to me that the US and Israel are working in concert here; at the very least, Israel is almost certainly acting with the approval of the US.