At the same time, Tel Aviv’s armed forces attacked targets in the Gaza Strip, using helicopter gunships to destroy two houses. Israeli troops also took up positions inside the West Bank city of Jenin.

The Israeli government seized on the suicide bombing in Haifa the previous day, in which 19 people were killed, to escalate its offensive against Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian organization Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the suicide attack.

The Israeli jets destroyed buildings and injured several people at Ain Saheb, 10 miles outside the Syrian capital of Damascus. Israeli officials claim that Islamic Jihad and Hamas, another Palestinian organization, use the area as a training camp—a charge denied by Syrian spokespeople, who said Ain Saheb is a civilian facility for Palestinians.

“Syria has been warned more than once by the United States that it should close all the facilities of the Islamic Jihad,” said Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner October 5. “Apparently it has not done so. And it is our policy after what happened yesterday to go after Islamic Jihad wherever they are.”

Israeli military officers released a statement claiming that Syria “gives cover in its territory and capital to the terror organizations that act against Israeli citizens.” They added, “Iran is funding and directing the organizations.”

The bombing attack received the tacit support of U.S. government officials, who condemned the Syrian government as a backer of “terrorism.” After speaking with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, U.S. president George Bush said, “I made it very clear to the prime minister that Israel’s got a right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained in terms of defense of the homeland.”

Following the attack, Syrian officials sought to line up diplomatic condemnation of the action at the United Nations Security Council. The resolution they presented condemned “the military aggression carried out by Israel against the sovereignty and territory of the Syrian Arab Republic on 5 October 2003.”

U.S. officials opposed the resolution. “The United States believes that Syria is on the wrong side of the war on terrorism,” said Washington’s UN ambassador John Negroponte on October 5. “We believe it is in Syria’s interest, and in the broader interest of Middle East peace, for Syria to stop harboring and supporting the groups that perpetrate acts such as the one that occurred yesterday.”

Washington has stepped up its pressure on both Syria and Iran to abandon weapons programs and halt funding and support to Palestinian organizations. In Damascus following the U.S. occupation of Iraq, U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell demanded that Syria clamp down on several Palestinian organizations with offices in the Syrian capital. Although the government says these facilities have been closed, Washington and Tel Aviv assert that representatives of Islamic Jihad and other groups continue to function.  
 
 
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