If you think today’s protests along the Israeli-Syrian border represent a “Palestinian Spring,” think again.
The Reform Party of Syria says says it has information that Assad regime paid off today’s Naksa protesters who tried breaching the Golan border:
The Reform Party of Syria has learned today, from intelligence sources close to the Assad regime in Lebanon, that Syrians storming through the Golan Height next to the Quneitra crossing are Syrian farmers who have migrated in recent years from the drought-stricken northeast Syria to the south. Estimates put the number at 250,000 impoverished migrants.
Information received cite the regime has paid hundreds of these farmers $1,000 each to show-up and $10,000 to their families should any of them succumb to Israeli fire. In Syria, an average salary is about $200 a month and to these impoverished farmers, such a one-time sum can keep them economically afloat for six months.
This means that a lot protesters a) weren’t Palestinian to begin with, b) paid to perform, c) disproving the “populist” theme of the protest, while d) distracting the world from Assad’s bloodiest weekend.
We already know that Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad co-opted recent Naqba Day protests. As Oliver Duggan put it:
It was a calculated abuse of unprecedented world media attention on the region. And it was likely designed to provoke an Israeli response that could mirror the harsh crack-down on revolts by other tyrannical regimes . . .
Notwithstanding the Iranian mullahs who pull Hamas’ strings, and today’s pseudo-refugees sponsored by Assad, some journos spin the Palestine Spring as the real deal.
