Israeli Soldiers Shoot at Protesters on Syrian Border

Wave after wave of protesters, mainly Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria, approached the frontier with the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers opened fire on those who crossed a new trench and tried to attack the border fence near the towns of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights and Quneitra in Syria.

By nightfall, the Syrian news agency SANA reported that 22 protesters had been killed and more than 350 had been wounded. Israeli officials said that they had no information on casualties but suggested that the Syrian figures were exaggerated.

Even so, it was the worst bloodshed in the Golan Heights since Israel and Syria fought a war there in 1973.

The protest, on the anniversary of the start of the 1967 Middle East war, followed a larger, coordinated assault by demonstrators three weeks ago on four fronts — Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank — and attempts on two others, Egypt and Jordan, that were thwarted by those governments.

This time, Lebanon and the Hamas government in Gaza kept protesters away from their borders, and the turnout was low in the West Bank.

The focus was on Syria, where thousands of protesters tried to force their way across the border. Syria’s decision to allow the protest appeared to reflect a calculated strategy to divert attention from its own antigovernment uprising.

Still, the protesters said they counted the day a success because they drew Israeli fire on unarmed demonstrators, generating outrage at Israel. At a time when the peace process is already strained, that reaction is likely to increase international pressure on Israel to create the conditions for resumed negotiations with the Palestinians, and to bolster support in the United Nations for the Palestinian appeal for statehood.

The young protesters, disillusioned with the stymied peace talks and continued Israeli settlement building, say they believe they have hit on a new tactic that at least achieves something, if at a cost, and they intend to repeat it.

“The plan is to clash with the soldiers now,” said Muhammad Abu al-Nassar, 25, who was protesting at a West Bank checkpoint. “We believe that unarmed popular resistance is the best form of ending the occupation.”

Israeli officials, who say they tried every nonlethal method of crowd control at their disposal before resorting to live fire, worry about being cast as the villain but admit they are in a bind.

“What would any country do if people from an enemy country were marching on its borders?” asked Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. “We tried all other possible means to stop them.”

At the weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not allow “extremist elements” to penetrate Israel’s borders. “I have instructed the security forces to act with determination, with maximum restraint, but with determination to maintain our sovereignty, our borders, our communities and our citizens,” he said.

A military spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, said that Israeli forces warned the protesters not to approach the border, in Arabic with megaphones; used nonlethal riot dispersal means like tear gas, which failed to deter them; and then fired warning shots in the air.

When the demonstrators reached the fence, soldiers were “left with no choice,” she said, “but to open fire at the feet of the protesters.”

Syria’s role also creates a quandary for Israel. Although the countries technically remain in a state of war, Syria has kept the border quiet for 37 years.

Protesters there could not have approached the border without government acquiescence, and analysts said the decision to allow the protest was aimed at deflecting attention from the protests sweeping Syria against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“I would note that these protests were carried live on Syrian television” an Israeli official said. “They do not carry the protests against their own regime live. They made a decision to try to exploit this for their own purposes.”

The official spoke anonymously because, he said, Israel did not want to allow the protests to stoke tensions with Syria.

But even revived peace talks with the Palestinians would be unlikely to alter Mr. Assad’s calculations.

Rina Castelnuovo contributed reporting from Majdal Shams, Golan Heights, and Fares Akram from Gaza.

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Syria Broadens Deadly Crackdown on Protesters

The breadth of the assault — from the Mediterranean coast to the poor steppe of southern Syria — seemed to represent an important turn in an uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to the 11-year-long rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Though officials have continued to hint at reforms, and even gingerly reached out to some dissidents last week, the escalation of the crackdown seemed to signal the government’s intent to end the uprising by force.

Since the beginning of the uprising, Syria has barred most foreign journalists, and many news accounts have relied on human rights groups and networks of activists inside Syria. But in past days, those activists have complained that they have been almost entirely unable to speak with people in Homs and Baniyas, the most besieged places. Even satellite phones that protest organizers had smuggled across Syria were not working. “It seems that they’ve gotten better in tracking satellite mobile phones,” said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group.

The reasons for the newfound ability to sever communications were unclear, but Obama administration officials have said Iran, which faced a similar uprising in 2009, has provided the Syrian government, a longtime ally, with coercive supplies like tear gas, along with communications equipment that might help interrupt activists’ phones.

“The only country they can trust to back them to the end is Iran,” said an analyst based in Syria who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The Syrian government’s actions against protesters, which have intensified since Friday, come at a time when the opposition remains unable to act collectively. Even as the United States and the European Union have imposed limited sanctions on government figures, though not Mr. Assad himself, many officials view the opposition as too weak to provide an alternative, a point that the Syrian government has relentlessly pressed. Its argument, either us or chaos, has found a certain resonance among minorities of Christians and heterodox Muslim sects there.

“We’re not focused on a transition right now,” an Obama administration official said in Washington. “We don’t know who we’d talk to and who we’d work with.”

At least 30 tanks were said to be in Baniyas, one of Syria’s most restive locales, which the military entered before dawn on Saturday. Activists and human rights groups complained of receiving almost no information from Baniyas, which has a population of 50,000 and is home to an oil refinery and a hydroelectric plant that serves the region, but one activist said at least 6 people had been killed and 250 people arrested since the operation began.

As in other towns, electricity and water were cut, at least temporarily.

Fighting was reported in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, which tanks entered Friday. Mr. Tarif said 14 people had been killed there; he could not confirm the casualties in Baniyas. Videos smuggled out of Homs, their authenticity undetermined, showed gunfire and crowds of people running for cover across a grassy lot. Mr. Tarif said the military also entered Tafas, in southern Syria.

“This is a campaign that’s going to more cities,” he said. “It’s escalating, and it’s very worrying because they’re also getting better at isolating these places.”

He said his group had documented 750 arrests, most of them in the Damascus suburbs, though he had no precise figures for Homs and Baniyas.

The uprising began in mid-March with protests in Dara’a, a town near Tafas and the border with Jordan. The protesters gathered after security forces arrested and mistreated high school students for scrawling antigovernment graffiti. The unrest soon spread, with successive Fridays in which thousands took to the streets in dozens of towns. The military’s presence in Tafas on Sunday suggests that the plight of Dara’a, part of a landscape knit tightly by extended clan loyalties, has roiled the region around it, a fertile but drought-stricken plateau famous for wheat and vineyards.

The military said it was withdrawing from Dara’a last week, and while armed columns were filmed departing, residents say the military remains in force. Townspeople were allowed to leave their homes Sunday from 8 a.m. to noon, activists said, and intermittent electricity and water were restored to some areas.