As the Syrian civil way went into its third year this week, signs abounded of increasing readiness for the use of chemical weapons on both sides of the conflict.

Since February, the US, Israel, Ankara and Amman have been aware of Bashar Assad’s resolve to override their threats and resort to deadly poison gas if the rebels closed in on the heart of Damascus. On April 3, an unnamed Syrian army officer made the warning clear. By continuing to advance on Damascus, he said, “the rebels and their leaders” were assured of “certain death.”

At about the same time, DEBKAfile reported exclusively that the Syrian ruler had ordered protective suits for chemical warfare and gas masks distributed to the 4th and 3rd Divisions defending the capital. Tank commanders were told to activate their filtering systems against chemical and biological agents.

Protective suits have since been distributed to the Syrian army units fighting in southern Syria and the Golan, the enclave divided between Syria and Israel by the 1974 ceasefire that ended the Syrian war of attrition after the Yom Kippur War.

These steps were registered by the joint counter-chemical warfare center set up between the US, Israel, Turkey and Jordan when President Barack Obama visited their capitals in the third week of March. In the last few days, Israeli troops were asked by this center to start handing out atropine injections or IV drips to Syrian rebels fighting Syrian troops on the Golan.

Extracted from deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), Jimson weed (Datura stramonium) and mandrake (Mandragora officinarum), atropine is highly effective for blocking such nerve agents as sarin, VX,  soman and tabun and counteracting the effects of poisoning, such as nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping and low heart rate.

The IDF’s distribution of a chemical weapon antidote to Syrian rebels may be regarded as the first Israeli intervention in the Syrian conflict, a small step past administering medical treatment to Syrians wounded in battle.

The Syrian high command will have noted this, or been tipped off by its Iranian, Russian or Hizballah intelligence comrades. And, say DEBKAfile’s military sources, this may account for the Syrian decision for the first time in 34 years to direct shell fire at an IDF Golani patrol on duty Friday night, April 12, in the northern Golani area of Kibbutz El-Rom.

No one was hurt. But in order to deter the Syrians from making this attack a precedent, Israeli artillery and a Tamuz rocket returned the fire, achieving a direct hit on the Syrian outpost.
The British disclosure April 12 in the Times of London of soil samples smuggled out of Syria provided forensic evidence of the use of chemical weapons but carefully avoided assigning responsibility.

Though containing traces of “some kind of chemical weapon” collected from an unidentified “neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus,” the British experts could not identify the type of weapon – possibly even tear gas – or whether it was fired by forces loyal to President Assad or the rebels fighting him.

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that, even if Britain’s MI6 secret service knew the answers to these questions, they would take care not to make them public so as not to build up the pressure for Western military intervention - pledged by President Obama in the event of chemical weapons being used in Syria – before the US president was ready to give the go signal. 


http://news.antiwar.com/2013/04/12/israel-fires-missile-into-syria-claims-direct-hit/

Israel Fires Missile Into Syria, Claims ‘Direct Hit’

Claims Retaliation for Fire 'Toward' Israel

by Jason Ditz, April 12, 2013
Israeli troops are claiming to have scored a “direct hit” in an attack on a target inside Syria today, after responding to what they claimed was gunfire “towards” Israel, thatdid no damage and caused no injuries.
Israeli DM Moshe Ya’alon insisted that Israel was determined not to allow “a routine of sporadic firing at our civilians or our forces,” though it is unclear if whatever firing was actually “at” anyone, and it certainly did hit anything.
What was “direct hit” in the Israeli attack is entirely unclear, though Defense Ministry officials claim that whatever they hit, it was the presumptive source of the previous shooting.
Israel occupied a portion of the Golan Heights in 1974, and the Syrian rebels have taking much of the Syrian-held remainder in the recent civil war. Israeli officials have maintained at every one of these cross-border incidents that they are unsure if the people shooting “toward” the border and getting hit with missiles are government troops or rebels.

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/04/12/syria-presses-offensive-along-jordan-lebanon-borders/

Syria Presses Offensive Along Jordan, Lebanon Borders

Presses Lebanon to Stop Rebel Arms Smuggling

by Jason Ditz, April 12, 2013
Just one day after an unexpectedly fierce offensive against towns in Daraa, along the Syria-Jordan border, the Syrian military is now widening offensives on two fronts, attempting to deepen gains in Daraa and reclaim some strategically important territory along the Lebanese border.
The fighting along the Lebanese frontier involved fighting in Qusair and air strikes against rebel forces inside hilltop villages along the border. Those villages have been contested not only between Syria’s government and rebels, but also by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, which has fought to protect Lebanese Shi’ites living on the Syrian side of the border.
The suggests a major change in strategy for Syria’s military, which had long been willing to cede territory to rebels while shoring up defenses in the major cities. The change likely reflects the growing use of the borders to smuggle arms to the rebels. Nowhere has this been more apparent than Daraa, where the US is openly operating a rebel training facility on the Jordan side of the border.
The Syrian government is also pressing Lebanon to do more to prevent arms smuggling along their border. Lebanon’s government is seen as mostly pro-Assad, but seems limited in its ability to actually stop the rebels along their frontier.