A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

June 5, 2007

War Talk With Syria- Again

The head of Israeli Military Intelligence testified today before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He stated that the Syrians were more ready than ever to go to war. He did not believe that they had decided to go to war, but he then went on to publicly warn the Syrians that if they were to go to war, they had what to lose: an air force, civilian infrastructure, and much more.

At the same time, Chief-of-Staff Gabi Ashkenazi stated that the IDF would be ready for war by the summer. He stated that the job of an army was to either get ready for a war or fight one. So, as opposed to yesterday when the noise about war was going down, today it seems to have been retched up another notch. The military correspondent on Israeli Television Channel 10 was appalled today, stating that all this loose talk about war could become a self fulfilling prophecy. The correspondent went on to say that going all the way back to Ben Gurion, the job of the IDF was to prevent a war, not cause one.

The Palestinians marked the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War today. They noted that they were the only ones in the Arab world truly paying for the mistakes of the Arab states in 1967. Abu Mazen gave a speech today saying that the hope of a Palestinian state was slipping away. He went on to discuss the possibility of civil war, which he said the Palestinians were on the verge on and it would be worse than the occupation.