Word: damascus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...bloodshed. Of course, talk of war is as much a part of the daily Middle East vocabulary as those diplomatic code words. Syrian President Hafez Assad's contribution last week was particularly grim. "Naturally, I don't want to negate the chances of the peace altogether," he said in Damascus. "But I still say if we [Arabs and Israelis] don't go to war again, it will be a miracle...
...Israeli incursion raised fears that a battlefield miscalculation could accidentally trigger a fifth Middle East war. Officials in Damascus complained bitterly that the Israelis were deliberately trying to provoke the Syrian troops in Lebanon. Since the official end of the major civil war in Lebanon last October, to avoid any such confrontation, the Israelis have stayed south of the Litani River -Israel's so-called red line (see map). There was also speculation in Damascus that the Israelis might use any response as an excuse for a pre-emptive strike against Syria. Even if they were not spoiling...
...Israelis, clearly, have their own ideas about how to keep peace in the area. Last week's incursion was an unmistakable message to Damascus and Beirut that not even a token force of Palestinians is permissible in southern Lebanon. In the midst of last week's fighting, the Israeli government pointed out, Palestinian Katyusha rockets from across the border hit the Israeli towns of Safad and Qiryat Shemona-scene of a notorious fedayeen raid in 1974, in which 18 Israelis and three Palestinians died, and 15 people were wounded. If Washington cannot persuade the Israelis to back...
...epidemic seemed most severe in Syria, where 3,000 cases, with 68 deaths, were recorded by last week. The government requested and received help in the form of drugs and advisers from WHO, and the U.S. donated $25,000 worth of emergency supplies to Damascus. Syria denied responsibility for being the original source of the outbreak. It put the blame on Lebanon, where Syrian soldiers on peace-keeping duty in devastated Beirut were said to have picked up the disease and carried it back to Damascus and their native villages. That may be true, but the rapid spread...
...would convene in Geneva this autumn, like his hopes for quick ratification of a Canal treaty, have gone aglimmering. For a time, the Administration thought the Palestine Liberation Organization was about to recognize Israel's right to exist. That notion was dashed last week at a meeting in Damascus of the P.L.O.'s 35-member central council, which castigated the U.S. for plotting with Israel rather than pressuring Jerusalem to support a Palestinian homeland. Repeated U.S. objections to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories have had no visible effect on Israeli