JERUSALEM (IPS) — “September 2011 is knocking on our
gates,” says an Israeli army officer who, under strict operation
procedures, would not reveal his name. He was alluding to the United Nations
General Assembly annual meeting expected to resoundingly endorse the
Palestinian drive for recognition of statehood.

The officer was also literally referring to even more
pressing events. On Sunday, hundreds of young Palestinians living in refugee
camps in Syria marched towards the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights in an
attempt to cross the “disengagement lines.”  According to media reports emanating from Syria, 23
demonstrators were killed, hundreds more were wounded.

A Palestinian protester kicks a tyre towards Israeli troops (not seen) during clashes at a demonstration marking the anniversary of the 1967 Middle East War, in the West Bank village of Nazlat Issa near West Bank town of Tulkarem June 7, 2011. The protesters on Tuesday marked the third day commemorating the 44th anniversary of the war in which Israel captured East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Golan Heights. Israel is on alert following Sunday’s deadly confrontations on a ceasefire line between Israel and Syria after hundreds of Palestinian protesters surged it’s frontiers to mark the anniversary of the war. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini

Israeli army officials refused to divulge their own count of
the fatalities, arguing that since the incidents had taken place inside Syrian
territory they couldn’t check the veracity of the information. The allegation
was that Molotov cocktails hurled by the demonstrators had ignited a brushfire,
provoking the explosion of anti-tank mines disseminated in the area.

Israeli military sources said that three infantry battalions
were posted along the fence that separates the rugged area. Snipers were posted
on high ground, and equipped with telescopes mounted on their assault rifles.
For fears of infiltrations into the Israeli-controlled territory, soldiers had
been instructed to use live ammunition procedures against the marchers: First
warning shots in the air, then shots aimed at the legs, then ‘shoot-to-kill’
orders.

At another crossing point in the vicinity of the Syrian town
of Quneitra where soldiers and demonstrators were at closer range, the troops
fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas.

Arab social networks had called June 5 the “Naqsa
Day” or day of the “Defeat,”  a day of protest in commemoration of the June 1967 War
dubbed triumphantly in Israel as the “Six Day War.”  Then, 44 years ago, the Israeli-Arab
war brought about the start of the long Israeli occupation of Palestinian and
Syrian lands.

“Naqsa day” came in the wake of “Naqba
day,”  another commemoration
of Israel’s troubled history with its Arab neighbors. “Naqba” is the
“Great Catastrophe” endured by the Palestinians during Israel’s
“War of Independence” that accompanied its May 8, 1948 declaration of
statehood.

During that war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were
either forcibly removed by Jewish soldiers from their homes and land or were
simply told by invading Arab soldiers to temporarily move away from the
fighting.

Within a year, the majority of Arabs living in what used to
be British Mandate Palestine turned into a minority on the land that became Israel;
Three generations of Palestinian refugees, around four to five million, are
still scattered across neighboring Arab countries, predominantly in Lebanon,
Jordan and Syria. The estimated number includes refugees from the 1967 War.

When three weeks ago, hundreds of refugees living in Lebanon
and Syria marched towards the fence. Israel was caught by surprise. Tens of
demonstrators from Syria then infiltrated the Israeli side of the Golan.
Fifteen demonstrators were killed on the Lebanese and Syrian side.

This time, the border with Lebanon remained quiet. The
Lebanese Army imposed a closed military zone on the area. Yet, the Israeli army
readiness, and its successful determination at preventing infiltrations at all
cost, came at a greater cost, in human life.

In incidents similar to those that occurred last month,
hundreds of Palestinians confronted Israeli soldiers at the Kalandia checkpoint
in the occupied West Bank. Scores were wounded. The Islamist movement Hamas
kept Gaza demonstrators at bay.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the demonstrators
were seeking to “challenge Israel’s sovereignty and undermine the borders
of the country,” stressing that, “like every country in the world,
Israel has the right and the duty to guard its borders and protect them.”

The statement tenaciously eluded the fact that the
international community doesn’t recognize the territories occupied in the wake
of the 1967 War as sovereign Israeli lands. In 1981, Israel unilaterally
extended the administration and the law of the state to the Golan Heights, a de
facto annexation declared as “null and void and without international
legal effect” in a UN Security Council resolution.

Accusing fingers of “border provocation” were
pointed at Syria and its leader. “Bashar el-Assad is trying to divert
attention from the massacre that he’s carrying out against his own
citizens,” said Minister for Home Front Defense Matan Vilnai.

Netanyahu staunchly opposes re-launching negotiations with
the Palestinians on the basis of the “1967 borders.”  Caught in the crossfire between
preventing “Israel’s sovereignty” from being
“challenged,”  and
exercising “restraint” when facing civilians, his government is bound
to be facing ever more resolute defiance in the weeks and months ahead.

Another commemoration will take place in July. Fifteen ships
carrying international activists will sail from Turkey towards the Gaza Strip
in an effort to defy the siege still imposed by Israel on the embattled
territory.

The activists will mark a similar attempt, that of the
“Peace Flotilla.”  In May
last year, six Turkish activists were killed aboard the M.V. Marmara during a
botched naval assault by Israeli commandos while the boat was in international
waters.

On the 1967 border (the
pre-“Naqsa”/post-“Naqba” ceasefire line), other
confrontations regularly pit Israeli soldiers against Palestinian
demonstrators, in Bi’ilin for instance, a flashpoint of Palestinian civil
resistance against Israel’s separation wall established on lands beyond the
line. And there are almost daily clashes in Palestinian neighborhoods in
occupied East Jerusalem.

On Monday morning, hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators
were still camped near the fence that cuts across Syria’s Golan, raising the concern
that the area will become another bloody fixture of the ongoing Israeli-Arab
conflict.

So, no wonder that the current low-burning, yet larger-scale
intifada uprising is regarded by the nameless Israeli officer as a prelude to
the gathering storm that’s expected to hit Israel in September.