Syria's saber-rattling anti-Israel conference

There was a conference in Syria over the weekend called the Arab-International Golan Forum. Its purpose was pretty much to insult and incite against Israel as much as possible in a 48 hour period.

Among the charges leveled:

For his part, the liberated captive Medhat al-Saleh said that the Israeli occupation forces are applying a systematic killing policy against all the Arab prisoners through neglecting their health conditions.

"All Arab prisoners are subjected to solitary confinement and all forms of torture in the complete absence of the basic and minimum health and human conditions," said the liberated captive Amaal Mahmoud.

Head of the Mine Victim Rehabilitation Committee in the occupied Golan Omar al-Heebi pointed out to the high risk of the mines Israel planted in Quneitra before it was liberated, which caused lots of injuries and claimed many lives.

Israel steals around 800 million cubic meters of the occupied Golan water annually, and it has so far constructed 10 dams to transfer water to al-Naqab desert and Dimona reactor, thus making the amount of the stolen water exceed 31 billion cubic meters since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, said Arsan Arsan, director of Water Resources Department in Quneitra.

He also pointed out to the danger posed by the dams Israel has built on the rivers running towards the liberated part of the occupied Golan, particularly Ein al-Hamra dam and al-Mansoura dam 1 km to the west of Quneitra city.

They also accused Israel of contaminating Syria with nuclear waste, and the final resolution called on Syria to "liberate" the Golan via all means of resistance, meaning this Syrian sponsored conference called for war with Israel.

Needless to say, the world media ignored this.

One of the more interesting charges leveled against Israel was that it displaced a half a million Syrians since 1967. Given that the Golan had less than 200,000 people in 1967, this is a pretty amazing feat.

Perhaps more interesting is that these displaced people and their descendants are living in Syrian "refugee" camps over forty years later. Of course, displaced persons are not legally refugees, and there is nothing stopping Syria from building new towns for these people to live in.

Syria, like the other Arab nations, prefer to use people as political cannon fodder against Israel rather than helping them rebuild their lives. Syria's practice against this group is even more egregious and cynical, as these people are full citizens of Syria and should have equal rights. Syria chooses to let them fester so that they can whine about Israeli "ethnic cleansing" decades later.

It is instructive to compare the daily lives of these Syrian citizens with those of the Arabs who stayed in the Golan and now "suffer" under "occupation."