<p>The toll of demonstrators killed trying to break through into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights rose to 28.<br /><br />Syrian police set up a pair of checkpoints, including one a kilometre from the border. Nearly 20 protesters began walking down a hill leading to the border when two police officers blocked their advance by extending their arms. Protesters passed Syrian and UN outposts without impediment on Sunday and during a similar border rush three weeks ago, and it was not clear why Syrian forces intervened on Monday.<br /><br />The repeated attempts to challenge the borders play into widespread Israeli fears that the Palestinians will not make do with a state on lands captured in 1967, but want to take over all of historic Palestine, including present-day Israel.<br /><br />Syrian role<br /><br />Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak suggested that the Syrian regime might have instigated Sunday’s border unrest — and similar unrest three weeks ago — to deflect attention from its crackdown on its own protesters. At least 35 Syrians died in a government crackdown in the country’s north over the weekend.<br /><br />Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel would file a complaint to the UN “concerning the Syrian regime’s cynical manipulation of its own citizens in order to generate violent incidents on the border.”<br /><br />Barak also predicted that Syrian President Bashar Assad has been irreparably weakened by the uprising. “I think Assad will fall,” Barak told Israel Radio on Monday.<br /><br />Human rights groups say more than 1,200 people have died in the crackdown against anti-government protesters in Syria since March. Assad has coupled military operations with symbolic overtures towards the opposition, including an amnesty for many prisoners and a call for national dialogue.<br /><br />The instability in Syria, Barak said, rules out current peacemaking prospects. Israel and the Syrians last held talks in 2008.<br /></p>
<p>The toll of demonstrators killed trying to break through into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights rose to 28.<br /><br />Syrian police set up a pair of checkpoints, including one a kilometre from the border. Nearly 20 protesters began walking down a hill leading to the border when two police officers blocked their advance by extending their arms. Protesters passed Syrian and UN outposts without impediment on Sunday and during a similar border rush three weeks ago, and it was not clear why Syrian forces intervened on Monday.<br /><br />The repeated attempts to challenge the borders play into widespread Israeli fears that the Palestinians will not make do with a state on lands captured in 1967, but want to take over all of historic Palestine, including present-day Israel.<br /><br />Syrian role<br /><br />Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak suggested that the Syrian regime might have instigated Sunday’s border unrest — and similar unrest three weeks ago — to deflect attention from its crackdown on its own protesters. At least 35 Syrians died in a government crackdown in the country’s north over the weekend.<br /><br />Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel would file a complaint to the UN “concerning the Syrian regime’s cynical manipulation of its own citizens in order to generate violent incidents on the border.”<br /><br />Barak also predicted that Syrian President Bashar Assad has been irreparably weakened by the uprising. “I think Assad will fall,” Barak told Israel Radio on Monday.<br /><br />Human rights groups say more than 1,200 people have died in the crackdown against anti-government protesters in Syria since March. Assad has coupled military operations with symbolic overtures towards the opposition, including an amnesty for many prisoners and a call for national dialogue.<br /><br />The instability in Syria, Barak said, rules out current peacemaking prospects. Israel and the Syrians last held talks in 2008.<br /></p>
