Syrian President Bashar Assad has vowed to recapture the Golan Heights one way or another, and reaffirmed his nation's relationship with the Hizbullah terrorist organization.
In an interview published Thursday in the Kuwaiti newspaper a-Sharq, Assad promised to take the Golan from Israel. "There is no escaping the fact that the day will come when we will free the Golan, through peace or through war," he was quoted as saying. "When a citizen loses hope, he will turn to the path of resistance in one form or the other."
The comments followed the installation this week of the Netanyahu government. Included in the coalition are the Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home), Jewish Home, United Torah Judaism (UTJ) and Sephardic religious Shas parties, all considered to be right-wing. The Labor party, which clinched the coalition, is considered at this point to be a centrist-to-leftist force.
The Syrian president said, however, that he is not concerned with the newest players in the government.
"All Israeli governments are the same: Ariel Sharon carried out a massacre in Palestine, and Barak aided the war in Gaza such that there is no difference between Right and Left in Israel," he claimed.
Assad also expressed his support for the Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist group in the same interview, explaining that "Hizbullah has an issue with Israel, and we have the same issue. We therefore support the organization."
The Syrian president noted that Hizbullah's influence in Lebanon has grown and the group has developed into a political as well as terrorist entity, increasingly grasping control of the Lebanese government.
"We are speaking about a national organization with a religious agenda that acts in the framework of the Lebanese homeland," Assad said. "We see here a national party."