Yesterday (5/6/11) Palestinian and Syrian refugees attempted to gather at the Golan Heights to mark the anniversary of the start of the six day war. Israeli troops responded by opening fire on the unarmed group with live ammunition killing 20 and wounding around 380. In an attempt to make their shooting of unarmed civilians appear different from say the Yemeni governments shooting of unarmed civilians the Israeli government claimed that they were doing what was necessary to protect their borders and claimed that international law prevented them from using non-lethal weapons although they did use tear gas later in the day. The only problem with this is that the Golan Heights are part of Syria. The Israeli border is about 20km west of where the shootings took place. So rather then just shooting civilians in their country Israel actually went into someone else's country to shoot unarmed civilians.
The Israelis were right about one thing though. They accused the Syria government of drawing attention to the 44th anniversary of Naska day as it's known in order to distract from the current unrest in Syria. Here they've got a point because the reason why Israel has been orchestrating the unrest in Syria is to provoke a reaction from the Syrian government in order to make Israel appear as the victim of it's dangerous neighbours. The second part of this provocation strategy came today (6/6/11) with the news that Syria could be referred to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) over an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report into Israel's 2007 decision to bomb a nuclear power plant the Syrians were building near Deir Alzour. Although Syria should have notified the IAEA before they started construction the nuclear non-proliferation treaty allows them to build civilian nuclear power plants so I'm not really sure what Syria have done that was so wrong it would warrant a referral to the UNSC let alone an Israeli air attack.
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