Like Pawns To The Slaughter

Yet more Arab lives were sacrificed over the weekend for the cause of keeping Bashar al Assad and his family in power. Only this time the Assad regime had Israeli troops do the killing.

Hundreds of Syrian Palestinians and their supporters arrived at the border with Israel in buses on Sunday. Syria is in military lockdown, with tanks parked in town centres and numerous checkpoints controlling what travels on the road.

The buses of protesters only reached the border area because authorities allowed them to. They may well have been organised by the regime or at the very least encouraged.

Once again it seems Palestinian men were being used as pawns by an Arab regime. In their 100s they marched towards the border despite strenuous warnings from Israeli soldiers. They were pinned down by live fire for hours in trenches the Israelis had dug ready for them.

Some were killed by Israeli gunfire, others by anti tank mines that exploded near Quneitra when a brush fire was started by Molotov cocktails.

The tragic events were carried live by Syrian state television in marked contrast to the cover up perpetrated by Syrian government media of the military offensive being waged against its own people inside the country that has killed hundreds.

State ‘journalists’ appeared to have recovered their ability to count bodies stating at least twenty had been killed

While the world watches the pictures from the Golan, it will be distracted from the bigger story, Syria’s slaughter of its own people and the gradual demise of the Assad regime.

Apparently Hama apparently Friday. At 00:58 man in plain clothes firing rifle alongside police

The regime’s cynical obstruction of the media means we have almost no pictures of the massacres carried out since Saturday in the east of Syria for instance.

Witnesses have confirmed Israeli troops issued warnings to the advancing Syrian Palestinians and initially fired over their heads.

There are no reports of such niceties being observed by Syrian snipers firing into crowds at a funeral in the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour over the weekend. According to Syrian activists more than thirty have been killed by their own security forces in the east of Syria since Saturday.

Apparently Damascus, apparently Friday. Anti Assad protest in the Syrian capital.

Using Palestinians as pawns is one of a dwindling number of cards held by Bashar al Assad. Protests last week spread to parts of Damascus and Aleppo Syria’s two biggest cities so far relatively untouched by the unrest. He has other cards to play, each likely to be more desperate than the last.

Rami Makhlouf, a playboy billionaire crony of the president recently warned that Syria could cause instability on the borders of its neighbours. He should be taken at his word as this weekend’s events have shown.

YNET: Protesters caused their own deaths Probe of 'Naksa Day' events reveals Syrian protesters ignited minefields, threw firebombs without preparing extinguishers. IDF called three ceasefires to allow Red Cross to evacuate wounded, but protesters used this to gain ground

The IDF said Monday morning that many of the Syrian protesters who stormed the border fence and Quneitra crossing in honor of 'Naksa Day' were responsible for their own deaths by igniting mine fields on the border.

Meanwhile the army also announced at around 11:30 am that although the border demonstration had ended by late Sunday night, many were gathering once again in an area nearby. No violence was reported.

The Associated Press reported that Syrian police are preventing pro-Palestinian marchers from approaching the border. The report says police have set up a pair of checkpoints near the border and security forces have been telling people not to cross and sending them away.

Responding to Sunday's violence, IDF sources said the protesters who ignited minefields on 'Naksa Day' did not bring fire extinguishers with them and thus posed a danger to themselves and others by behaving irresponsibly. Others threw firebombs near Quneitra crossing to the same effect, they said.

The sources are also assuming that many protesters were hurt or killed as a result of the Red Cross's inability to reach them, due to protesters' refusal to cease violence in order to allow for medical evacuations.

IDF officials say commanders ordered three ceasefires, each of which were taken advantage of by the protesters in order to gain ground.

Many protesters remained on the border throughout the night but most had dispersed by morning, an IDF source said, stressing that soldiers were still on high alert for additional breaches of the fence.

Dolan Abu Salah, the mayor of Majdal Shams, was unconvinced that the protesters had dispersed, claiming that they had probably gathered on a hill known to be unobservable from Israel.

Police still surround the Druze village and the IDF has declared the village a closed military zone, though residents continue to move around at will and daily life continues normally, aside from a school strike. Checkpoints have been set up around the village in order to prevent residents from reaching the border and joining protests.

Meanwhile, the IDF continues to investigate Sunday's events. Syria claims 23 protesters were killed on the border and 350 injured, but the army says that number is a gross overestimate.

Hundreds of Syrians, most of them Palestinian refugees, stormed the border near Majdal Shams and the Quneitra crossing in honor of 'Naksa Day', which marks the "Arab downfall" of the Six Day War.

They were prevented from crossing by IDF troops, who were prepared due to a similar border breach on 'Nakba Day' last month.

Sources from the Syrian Opposition claim that President Bashar Assad's regime, under fire from civilians vying for overhauling reform recently, offered to pay demonstrators who join in the border protests $1,000 for participating, or give their families $10,000 in the event of their deaths.

Assad’s Help Wanted Sign: $25,000 Reward For Being Killed by IDF

The Syrian regime paid poor farmers in the north $1,000 to travel to the border at the Golan Heights border and challenge the IDF and another $25,000 to their families if they were killed, according to the opposition Reform Party of Syria.

The death toll in Sunday’s confrontation was reported at 23 by the government-controlled Syrian media, and the IDF is on high alert for more attempts on Monday to infiltrate into Israel.

The Reform party said that farmers, suffering from a severe drought, make less than the average Syrian salary of $200 a month, one-fifth of the amount of money they received to demonstrate and try to cross the border.

“It is obvious, with this action, [Syrian President Bashar] Assad wants to divert the attention of the world away from his own massacres and brutality that resulted in some 70 deaths yesterday [Saturday] and about 30 today in Jisr al-Shoghou,” the party's website said

The opposition party also expects more clashes so that Assad can “stand tall again in the eyes of the regime's supporters whose morale has taken quite a beating the last three months because of the violence perpetrated by Assad against unarmed civilians.”

The party’s platform specifies the strategic Golan Heights, captured by Israel in its defensive Six Day War in 1967, as part of Syria, but also believes in “peaceful negotiations.”

Its website added, “For Assad, winning through peace means also losing the war against his own people.”

More than 1,500 people have been killed and another 35,000 arrested or harassed by Assad’s forces in the eight-week uprising that has escalated from demands for reform to demanding his ouster as president.