The right to retaliate, Assad-style
May 6, 2013
A story on Israeli attacks and Syrian retaliation: In October 2003, Israel bombed a site in Syria it claimed was a Palestinian training camp. Of course, the Assad regime did nothing and repeated the sacred mantra that it reserved the right to retaliate at a time and place of its choosing.
However, the-then Syrian ambassador to Madrid, Mohsen Bilal, had forgotten to re-read the memo (it had been a few years since Israel had done its dirty work, even though its jets had casually circled Assad's Lattakia palace, unbothered, months earlier). Commenting to Reuters, Bilal said: "If Israel attacks Syria one, two and three times, of course the people of Syria and the government of Syria and the army will react to defend ourselves." Asked if that meant responding militarily, Bilal said: “By all means."
A normal response from the ambassador of any country whose sovereignty had just been violated from the enemy - well, any country except Assad's Syria. The regime went down on Bilal like a ton of bricks for this comment which nearly cost him the Madrid post, and for which he had to suck up so much that he exceeded himself and eventually became Minister of Information!
To reassure Israel, meanwhile, an official source from the Syrian Foreign Ministry later told Reuters that Ambassador Bilal didn't accurately represent the government, and that "This is his personal understanding of the official position." Humiliating its own ambassador lest Israel, God forbid, should imagine that the Syrian regime was even thinking of actually retaliating! Ever!
