The attacks on Wednesday came hours before top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken, whose stated goal is to restrain regional escalation of the Netanyahu regime’s war on Gaza, arrived in Tel Aviv.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Feb. 7. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)
Israel launched missile attacks on Homs and surrounding areas in Syria in the early morning of Wednesday, killing scores of civilians and destroying significant civilian infrastructure hours before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Tel Aviv.
“At approximately 00:30 at dawn on Wednesday, the Israeli enemy launched an aerial attack with missiles from the direction of northern Tripoli” Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported. Citing unnamed sources, SANA also said that some of the Israeli missiles were intercepted by the Syrian air defense.
According to Al-Mayadeen, at least four civilians were killed and seven others were wounded in the attacks. The number of casualties may increase as some of the buildings in Homs city collapsed due to the impact of the attack.
Israel launches airstrikes on Homs, Syria, via Lebanese airspace.
Syrian state media said that some of the missiles were intercepted. pic.twitter.com/qKdV8Y5mxB
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) February 6, 2024
The unprovoked attacks came a day after Syria — along with several other countries including Russia and China — raised the issue of the violation of its sovereignty by the U.S., Israel’s closest ally, in the U.N. Security Council.
The attacks in Syria coincide with the fifth visit of Blinken to the region since the Israeli war on Gaza began on Oct. 7.
One of the stated purposes of Blinken’s repeated visits to the region has been to restrain any possibility of regional escalation of the war.
U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Timmy Davis greeting Blinken in Doha on Feb. 6. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)
Despite its stated policy, U.S. forces carried out attacks on Syria and Iraq on Friday, Feb. 2 which was considered the largest since the 2003 Iraq war. This has invited global condemnation with countries expressing apprehensions about its possible impact on global peace and security.
Israel has also repeatedly carried out attacks on neighboring Lebanon and Syria since the beginning of its war on Gaza killing scores of civilians.
The Israeli war in Gaza has killed over 27,500 people including more than 10,000 children and wounded close to 67,000 others. It has also displaced most of the pre-war Gaza population.
Blinken went to Saudi Arabia on Monday and then to Cairo and Qatar on Tuesday. He was due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv Wednesday as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
The U.S. has failed to convince Israel to implement the U.N. Security Council resolution on the increased humanitarian assistance to Gaza adopted in December.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any possibility of a two-state solution despite U.S. calls for it.
Some of the top Israeli leadership have asked for building settlements inside Gaza going openly against the U.S. declaration against any such plans.
Though Blinken’s visit is expected to give a formal shape to a proposed ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, serious concerns have been raised about the fate of the deal. [Netanyahu rejected it on Wednesday.]
Israel also started its air and ground offensive in Rafah on Wednesday despite concerns of large scale civilian casualties because it is home to close to a million Palestinians displaced by Israeli attacks.
The UN says 'everything possible' must be done to avoid a full-scale Israeli attack on Rafah in southern Gaza.
? Follow our LIVE coverage: https://t.co/JrjzfNSSX0 pic.twitter.com/tnSEo4M8m5
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 7, 2024
Blinken reiterated the U.S. position of normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia during his visit to Riyadh on Monday. However, Saudi Arabia has maintained that it does not want to establish any formal relations with Israel until there is an independent Palestinian state.
“The kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relationship with Israel until an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and that the Israeli aggression of Gaza Strip stops and all Israeli occupation forces withdraw” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
This article is from Peoples Dispatch.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Blinken may imagine himself a Janus, looking backwards and forwards, but he is perceived in the ordinary sense of “two-faced” as a pale-faced frightened little minion who knows it’s all wrong–every bit of it–and continues listening to himself pretend to be compassionate. But this fake doesn’t fool anybody, absolutely nobody, with fury growing in the Arab Community, and the only thing he and Biden have left is a trembling, “It wasn’t our fault!”
Blinken is a blatant LIAR just like his boss and Bibi, well he is just evil incarnate. We are standing on the precipice of a full on world war and these guys are pushing us over the edge…
It seems pretty obvious now: unless the US takes Netanyahu out of power, it is therefore nothing less than a puppet state of Israel. It would certainly not cost the bloviated and corrupt majority of the members of Congress any monetary support from AIPAC to do so. It would give the rest of the world the belief that there is a price to be paid for not following the dictates of the world’s only hegemon. And whoever replaced little Bibi would think twice about failing to follow orders in the future. Otherwise, we can only conclude that little Bibi is dictating the orders going forward in this conflict to Biden himself, who is a status-quo simpleton in the best of times, and now a failure to the world in the worst of times. It may be Biden’s only way out of this morass.
Because israel shows no respect for usa, Biden and blinken, all funds and munitions support should be immediately frozen.
Cessation of aggression and start of diplomacy can start when Biden& blinken stop speaking out of both sides of their mouths, and when they & netenyahu regain their humanity.
“A diplomat who says Yes, means maybe;
a diplomat who says Maybe, means no; and
A diplomat [ b, b & n] who says No, is not a diplomat.”
Protest Loudly!