McClatchy: Israel says it bombed Syria, but why remains a mystery [View All]

Israel says it bombed Syria, but why remains a mystery
By Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2007


JERUSALEM — Nearly a month after a mysterious Israeli military airstrike in Syria generated political aftershocks from Washington to North Korea, the Israeli government lifted its official veil of secrecy Tuesday.

It didn't provide much new information about what took place on Sept. 6, however. While its government censor cleared the way for journalists here to report that the incident had taken place, rigid rules remained in effect that ban reporting what the target was, what troops were involved or why the strike was ordered.

Israel lifted its ban on reporting that the attack took place after Syrian President Bashar Assad told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Israeli jets had hit an "unused military building." But Israeli officials refused to say anything about the attack, and almost no one who'd be expected to know — from government officials to former intelligence officers — is talking.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the opposition Likud party, was widely criticized last week after giving a television interview in which he became the first elected leader to say that Israel had launched the attack.

The dearth of information has allowed fertile speculation: The strike was a dry run for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The target was an Iranian missile cache bound for Hezbollah Islamic fighters in Lebanon. The attack hit a fledgling Syrian-North Korean nuclear weapons program. Or it was meant to thwart efforts to provide Hezbollah with a "dirty bomb" to use against Israel.

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