Additions
Item: Britain’s The Guardian appears to maintain a daily and continuously updated brief rolled out as a blog: “Rebel leader accuses Hezbollah of invading Syria — as it happened.” Syria, Middle East Live, The Guardian, May 29, 2013 to midnight BST.
Item:
The talks have been marred by disagreement within the coalition over expanding its membership and appointing a new leadership. Lack of unity has threatened to rob the Islamist-dominated alliance of international support.
Main
Gen Selim Idriss said that more than 7,000 fighters of the Lebanese Shia movement were taking part in attacks on the rebel-held town of Qusair.
The French foreign minister has estimated the number at 3,000-4,000.
BBC. “Hezbollah fighters ‘invading’ Syria – rebel chief.” May 29, 2013.
Have you ever felt like you were watching choreographed news after other news has swept the page?
WASHINGTON – The US State Department called on Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia on Wednesday to withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately, saying their involvement on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad signaled a dangerous broadening of the war.
Like, Dude, man, where’s the news?
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“Qusayr, Syria” will join the list of head-nodding names coming out of Syria’s civil war: “In addition to being capital of the al-Qusayr District, it is also the administrative center of the al-Qusayr nahiyah (“subdistrict”) which consisted of 60 localities with a collective population of 107,470 in 2004,” says Wikipedia.
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This split between war reporting and journaling and the clumsy efforts of governments to management perception has gotten a bit nutty.
Dude — I am so having a Jeff Bridges kind of day . . . let’s call it The Big Lebowski meets Arlington Road . . . plus maybe a little bit of Gonzo and ol’ Hunter — but we KNOW Hezbollah has joined the fray in Syria, that Israel, probably, has intercepted arms shipments (rockets, actually), and put out a hospital in the Golan:
The denunciation of health conditions on the Golan is particularly surreal: Syrians in Syria, where medical care of any kind is often simply unavailable, would be thrilled to get the same state-of-the-art care as their brethren on the Golan–where, as in East Jerusalem, Israeli law applies, entitling residents to the same services as all other Israelis.
But thanks to Israel, some of those Syrians actually are getting such care–which is doubtless Syrian President Bashar Assad’s real gripe. Israel has quietly set up a field hospital on the Golan where dozens of Syrians wounded in the civil war have been treated; others, who need more intensive care, have been transferred to regular Israeli hospitals.
That is just all so five days ago!
It’s nice, I suppose, for Washington to tell Hezbollah to get lost, but it’s like a bad movie with a British war ship announcing and firing a warning shot: you know it’s just for show and the ships will close, the canon will fire, and somebody’s going to be boarded.
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This hit the news two hours ago:
The Syrian army said it had seized the disused Dabaa military airfield north of Qusayr, giving pro-Assad forces control of all roads out of the town in a major setback for the besieged rebels.
A military source told AFP the battle for the airfield was fierce and lasted several hours. “The operation led to the liberation of the airport and the deaths of several men who were inside.
AFP. “Hezbollah-led attack cuts off rebels in Syria’s Qusayr.” Google, May 29, 2013.
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