Nearly 2 months on, all parties are silent on Syrian air strike

Nearly eight weeks have passed, and all is remains quiet regarding a Sept. 6 Israeli air strike on a Syrian military facility.  Many players have a lot at stake, including Syria, Israel, the US and North Korea.  Washington Post Deputy Editor Jackson Diehl spells out the diplomatic quandry in his editorial today:

“Now Israeli and U.S. officials are quietly debating whether to go on the record and allow those shock waves to explode across the Middle East and beyond. At stake are not only Israel’s tense relations with Syria, which so far has chosen not to retaliate, but a host of other pressure points: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; the integrity of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Western leverage over Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; and — not least — the fragile U.S. nuclear bargain with North Korea, which is believed to have aided the secret construction.”

Read the entire editorial here-

Syrian police kill a PKK demonstrator

The Syrian police killed one Kurdish demonstrator at a pro-PKK rally outside the Syrian village of Qamishli over the weekend. About 200 kurds had gathered there to show support for their PKK allies in northern Iraq and southern Turkey. The PKK, which advocates for a kurdish state in the region, has been involved in military skirmishes with the Turkish government after the PKK killed a dozen Turkish soldiers and kidnapped several others.  They have since been released.

Syria has strengthened its ties with Turkey recently. The two countries are discussing opening their borders for trade as Turkey clamps down on its own border with Northern Iraq, where the PKK is headquartered.

Syria has a sizeable kurdish population in the northern part of the country.