Israel Widens Fight, Bombs Camp in Syria

Israeli fighter jets flew into Syria on Sunday and bombed a suspected terrorist training camp, pushing Israel’s fight to quell the Palestinian uprising beyond the boundaries of the Palestinian territories and sending waves of outrage throughout the region.

Israel struck Syrian territory in retaliation for a suicide attack that killed 19 people in a seaside restaurant hours earlier. Israel said it bombed an Islamic Jihad compound on the densely wooded site in El Saheb, about 14 miles northwest of Damascus, to “send a message” to unfriendly nations.

A lone man was reportedly injured, and there was some confusion over the target. Syrian officials insisted there was no camp there, only an ordinary run of civilian land, and Islamic Jihad denied training there.

“This is a very clear message both to Syria and to all those countries involved in the axis of terror directed against us,” said Raanan Gissin, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “We will not tolerate that there will be sanctuary or immunity for anybody, regardless of geography. It’s up to Syria whether Syria accepts the message and restrains its terror groups.”

The predawn bombings, the first such strike in nearly three decades, unveiled a sharp shift in Israeli policy. After three years of battle in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel is now declaring the right to chase armed Palestinian factions onto their bases in foreign countries. It’s a philosophy that echoes the U.S. doctrine that nations harboring terrorists are subject to attack.

It was the militant Islamic Jihad that sent a young lawyer to blow herself up in a crowded eatery Saturday and Syria was taken to task for aiding the group. Some Israeli officials described the air attack on Syria as self-defense.

“In the raid last night, Israel has upgraded its military reaction,” said Israel Radio, citing military sources. “The raid is a strategic change for Israel, which will no longer contain the struggle and restrict it to the Palestinian Authority territory alone.”

An infuriated Syria, at an emergency Sunday meeting of the U.N. Security Council, urged the council to condemn the attack. “Many people across the globe feel that Israel is above the law,” said Fayssal Mekdad, Syria’s United Nations representative.

While Syria is widely regarded as unlikely to respond with military force, a letter from the embattled state to the United Nations hinted otherwise. “Syria is not incapable of creating a resisting and deterring balance that forces Israel to review its actions,” it said.

The Arab League, too, scrambled to an emergency meeting in Cairo, where Secretary-General Amr Moussa called the bombings against Syria an act of “state-sponsored terrorism” and said, “Can there be more chaos than this?”

After a heated session, the Arab League issued a scathing statement to protest the “unjust aggression” and confirm Syria’s right to strike back. The raid threatened to pull the entire region into “whirlwind violence,” the statement said.

Lebanon blasted Israel for attacking a sovereign nation, and Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher called the strike “an aggression on an Arab brotherly country.” Muasher told Jordan’s official Petra news agency: “It can drag the whole region into a circle of violence.”

The strikes were launched on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a watershed battle between Israel and Syria and Egypt.

“This can only mean that Israel wants war,” said Imad Fawzi Shueibi, a political scientist at Damascus University. “I believe Israel is playing with fire. If Israel wants to take the U.S. example of striking terror abroad, it has chosen a very bad time.”

Palestinian groups rejected Israel’s description of the Syrian site. Islamic Jihad denied that it was their training center. And the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said it once was theirs, but that it was now defunct.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official, said recent intelligence indicated that the site was a refugee camp, though in the past it had been used for training by both Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front. “There is no current terrorist training there. This is a symbolic act,” Cannistraro said. “This seems like an escalation to send a message to the Syrians: Cease supporting Hamas and [Islamic Jihad].”

But Israel maintained that the base was used by a constellation of factions, including Al Qaeda and Hamas. A grainy video released by the Israeli army showed barracks and underground tunnels stacked with guns and explosives; Israel said it was footage shot by an Iranian television crew inside the Syrian camp.

According to Israel, the training base was operated with logistical help from Syria and money from Iran. Palestinians came to the camps for courses in explosives, artillery, guerrilla warfare and aviation, the Israeli army said. “Through Syria, Iran is sending a tentacle of terror into the [Palestinian] territories,” Gissin, Sharon’s advisor, said.

Sunday’s early-morning raid reportedly caused only minimal damage. An Israeli security source said the attack wasn’t meant to demolish the compound, but rather to rattle Israel’s foes.

“Always, when we know somebody is out there on their way to strike us, we’ll strike first,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled said.

The United States has accused Syria of fostering terrorism and has pushed Damascus to shut down Islamic Jihad and Hamas command centers. In the nervous weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Syria reportedly shuttered the groups’ offices.

But domestic public opinion makes any Arab nation hard-pressed to turn its back on the Palestinian cause, and Syria has mostly avoided embroiling itself in a confrontation with the militant groups.

The United States has kept up its complaints against Syria -- American officials also suspect Syria of working to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. But some Israeli officials say the United States has been too gentle with Syria.

“We find it very, very hard to believe or understand how the international community can allow Syria to continue harboring terrorists,” Peled said.

In the hours after the attack, Israeli officials hinted that they had bombed Syria with the implicit approval of the United States, and listed Syria’s defiance of U.S. demands as a justification for the overnight raids.

But in Washington, a senior Bush administration official said the White House found out about the bombing Sunday morning, hours after it took place.

President Bush phoned Sharon on Sunday morning and urged him not to heighten regional tensions. However, Syria’s move to condemn Israel in a resolution put before the U.N. Security Council is likely to be blocked by the U.S. unless Washington perceives it as “balanced” in its condemnation of both Israel and Palestinian leaders.

Under the spiritual guidance of its Damascus-based leader, Ramadan Shallah, Islamic Jihad has launched some of the deadliest suicide attacks against Israel in three years of gory conflict. But Sunday, the faction denied running any training camps in Syria.

“The Islamic Jihad Movement confirms that it does not have any training center or military presence in Syria,” said a statement from the group, faxed to Associated Press in Lebanon.

“This Israeli declaration is a failed attempt by the Zionist entity’s leadership to export its internal crisis and historic predicament, which was caused by the intifada and resistance, to neighboring countries,” the statement said.

As the silence of Yom Kippur stole over Israel -- with businesses closed -- bereaved families moved through the numbing rite of burying the dead. Reaction to the raid was muted.

But it was domestic politics that drove the surprise airstrike, argued Moshe Maoz, a Syria specialist with Hebrew University who described the attack as a dangerous bid to placate a bomb-battered Israeli public.

“It’s to appease enraged, frustrated Israelis, and it’s not going to help anything,” he said. “It’s risky. If it escalates, it could be ugly. If it expands to further attacks inside Syria, that’s dangerous.”

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, the attack on Syria momentarily eased fears that Israel might exile Arafat, which remains a standing Israeli threat amid the carnage of the failed Palestinian cease-fire.

After the Haifa bombing, international activists ringed Arafat’s compound as human shields in case Israeli soldiers came to seize him. But Israel’s hastily convened security meetings focused on moving the fight against Islamic Jihad beyond its borders and scarcely mentioned Arafat, Israeli media reported.

Although the Israel blames Arafat for propagating terrorism and undermining the Palestinian government, leaders are deeply divided over the wisdom of removing a man who is both a national symbol and the elected leader of the Palestinian people. Gissin said Israel will probably begin by shutting Arafat into a more intense isolation.

“If he were put in complete isolation, there’s a possibility that the Palestinian government could begin to breathe and function,” he said. “He’s this golden idol, this sacred cow, this thing that everybody worships. We’ll lock him up and isolate him.”

Still, the attack drew new calls for expulsion, and Arafat wasn’t taking any chances. He declared a state of emergency throughout the Palestinian territories on Sunday night, a move that allowed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister-designate Ahmed Korei to take over at the head of an emergency Cabinet.

The crisis was forced, Arafat said, by the “difficult current conditions the country is going through.”

“We need to have a Palestinian Cabinet so that there will be no power vacuum in the Palestinian Authority,” emergency Cabinet member Jamal Shoubaki told Al Jazeera television. Until the Haifa bombing disrupted the schedule, Korei, popularly known as Abu Alaa, was to present a proposed Cabinet to the Palestinian parliament for a vote this week. Thanks to Arafat’s declaration, he is now free to launch an assault against the militant factions, if he chooses.

Korei gave a news conference Sunday calling the security situation “unbearable,” and vowing to act.

Times staff writers Edwin Chen and Josh Meyer in Washington, Maggie Farley at the United Nations and Jailan Zayan in Cairo, and special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, contributed to this report.