Israel threatens Syria's Assad with collapse

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=117860&sectionid=351020202

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatens to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad if Damascus enters into a war with the Israeli regime.

"When there is another war, you will not just lose it, but you and your family will lose power," Lieberman told a business conference at Bar-Ilan University on Thursday.

"There must be a correlation, because unfortunately, until now a military defeat did not mean a loss of power," he added.

Lieberman's remarks come a day after Assad's meeting with the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos in Damascus where the Syrian leader warned that Israel was pushing the Middle East toward a new war.

Assad also said Israel is not being serious in seeking peace and that all signs implied that Tel Aviv is "working towards a war."

Lieberman reacted angrily to the comments, claiming that Assad "crossed a line" by directly threatening Israel and suggesting that any future offensive against the Lebanese resistance movement would draw a response from Syria.

The hawkish foreign minister's war rhetoric comes after his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem urged Israel to "return to reason, follow the path of peace ... and implement the requirements of peace fairly and comprehensively," warming that any future war would move into Israeli cities.

Lieberman also urged pressure on Damascus to give up its demand for a withdrawal of the Israeli military from the Golan Heights, which Syria insists must be returned before the two could hold any peace negotiations.

Israel seized the strategic Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed it in 1981, in a move never recognized by the international community.