Washington, D.C. — The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the nation‘s largest Arab-American membership organization, strongly condemned the Israeli air strike earlier today on a Syrian radar station at Dahr al-Baidar, twenty-two miles east of Beirut, Lebanon. The Israeli raid, the first direct attack against Syrian forces in Lebanon since 1996, killed three Syrian soldiers and injured six others.
ADC President Hala Maksoud said, “The Israeli strike is a serious violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon and a dangerous military escalation that threatens the security and stability of the whole region.” Maksoud characterized the Bush Administration‘s urging of all parties to exercise maximum restraint as “confused and inadequate.”
ADC firmly believes that there is no moral equivalence between the right of people to resist foreign occupation of their country and the provocative use of military force by the occupying power to justify its aggression. Raanan Gissin, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister, warned that “Syria and the Palestinians must understand that there is a new government in Israel and the rules of the game have changed.” Therefore, ADC calls on the U.S. administration to become fully engaged in putting an end to this escalation and military attack by Israel, which is likely to have dire repercussions for the whole region.
ADC also rejects Israel‘s rationale for its raid as defensive in nature and not aimed at broadening the conflict. The Sharon government cannot achieve peace and security for its people through acts of military aggression and intimidation against its Arab neighbors. “Real security,” according to Maksoud, “emanates from the achievement of comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region which ends all forms of aggression and occupation, whether in Lebanon, Palestine or the Syrian Golan Heights.”