Syria Pushed To Stop Hamas Rockets

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Beseeches Damascus To Use Its Influence To Stop Hamas Attacks On Israel

(CBS)  This story was written by CBS News' George Baghdadi in Damascus.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Syria on Tuesday and immediately set to work trying to convince President Bashar al-Assad to push harder for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Last year Sarkozy became the first Western leader to meet with al-Assad in years, bringing the country out of complete international isolation, and he hoped that special relationship would afford him more clout than his Western counterparts in dealing with Damascus.

Israel has so far ignored mounting international calls for a truce and continued bombarding the Gaza Strip. Officials say the fighting has now claimed the lives of some 575 Palestinians.

CBS News correspondent Richard Roth, reporting Tuesday from the Israeli side of the Gaza border, said Israel's military was pushing deeper into the tiny Palestinian territory. The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, said with the heightened fighting overnight the situation had become a "full-blown humanitarian crisis," added Roth.

"President Assad should help in convincing Hamas to stop firing the rockets. Syria should help us to convince Hamas to choose the voice of reason and the path of peace and the path of reconciliation," Sarkozy told reporters after his meeting with al-Assad. The French president visited leaders in Israel on Monday.

"I told the Israelis clearly that there is no military solution for Gaza and violence should stop now. I told them humanitarian aid should arrive to Gaza, and I also told them that firing rockets is unacceptable and should stop," he added, referring to the attacks by Hamas militants which have plagued southern Israel for years.

"I think this is the outline for an exit to the crisis," said Sarkozy, who also warned his Syrian counterpart that "time is not on our side."

Standing alongside him, the Syrian leader described what is happening in Gaza as a "war crime" and a "barbaric aggression" that Israel will pay for later.

Syria is by far the regional player in the Middle East with the most influence over Hamas.

Sarkozy likely pushed al-Assad to try and convince Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to stop the rocket fire against Israel.

Mashaal, in turn, will likely demand the reopening of border crossings into Gaza and an end to the economic blockade on the tiny Palestinian territory which has left many of its 1.5 million residents without sufficient food, water and power.

Attempts by the United Nations Security Council to come up with a statement calling for a cease-fire in the 11-day conflict have thus far failed. (Click here to read a World Watch entry by foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk on the latest effort at the U.N.)

But Sarkozy, whose country relinquished the rotating presidency of the European Union with the beginning of the New Year, is showing no signs of surrendering diplomatic center stage.

He has condemned Israel's use of ground troops while blaming Hamas, the Islamic militant group which has run Gaza for more than a year, for causing Palestinian suffering with the rocket fire that led to the Israeli offensive.

France has no official contacts with Hamas, which the U.S. and European Union both classify as a terrorist organization.

Several European leaders have traveled to the region in an effort to stop the violence. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana joined the meeting Tuesday in Damascus, as did a top advisor to the Turkish Prime Minster.

Daoud Oghlo, the Turkish envoy, was expected to meet Mashaal later Tuesday, according to diplomatic sources. Turkey is one of the few nations to maintain direct contacts with both Israel and Hamas.

[amer1can1]

The Israelis are taking my tax money to build new homes on stolen land and an apartheid wall on Palestinian land.
We should build homes for Katrina survivors instead.
STOP TAKING MY TAX MONEY, you thieves.

[noloyalisti]

The very first question you have to ask is why Hamas, a democratically elected government feels the need to defend it''s right to exist.

Could it be the apartheid polices of Israel? Or is it locking up a million and a half people in the new Warsaw Ghetto and systematically exterminating them by starvation and illness? Sounds pretty Nazi to me.

[letsbgood]

MORE PRESENT FACTS (really important)
11. Hamas took control with power (executed their own people) and corrupted elections
12. Hamas is attacking Israel before and after they took control
13. Israel never aimed at civilians (some unfortunate individuals past incidents)
14. Arab countries killed the Palestinians in their territories when tried to raise their voices
15. After 8 years of getting attacked by Hamas rockets, Israel decided to protect their civilians
16. Hamas is using the Palestinian civilians as a human shield to protect themselves
17. Hamas is using the Palestinian civilians to create hate when civilians killed by Israel
18. Israel is bombing locations where Hamas fired rockets from
19. Israel is sorry when civilians are getting killed but has the right to protect it''s own civilians
20: Hamas is only one of many Islamic groups around the world, who believes in this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410

[letsbgood]

SOME PRESENT FACTS (really important)
1. Israel is the only democracy in the middle east
2. Israel is now a fact so only a peace agreement can work
3. Palestinian territories where occupied while defending from surrounded Arab countries
4. No Arab county wants the territories as part of them
5. most Arab countries slaughtered the Palestinians in their territories
6. The Palestinian situation is an excuse for Arab countries to divert hate toward Israel
7. Israel had many attempts for peace but was the only one who really wants it
8. Israel dealt with terrorists (Arafat) when showed some willing to negotiate
9. Palestinians never hide the face that a peace will be the 1st step to occupy all Israel
10. Hamas is a terror organization supported by Iran to harm Israel

[letsbgood]

SOME PAST FACTS (really important)

1. Jewish always lived in Israel that once was their kingdom
2. Jewish where expelled from Israel but some where always there
3. Jewish temples where destroyed and mosques where build on top of it
4. Jewish did not steal Israel from the Palestinian
5. Jewish are back to Israel and rebuild it
6. Jewish are as greedy, nice, good, bad as any other group
7. Due to be hunted, Jewish EDUCATION was a surviving tool
8. Due to EDUCATION Jewish known to be smarter (high positions) and richer (not greedier...)
9. When economy is bad people tend to blame the powerful and rich groups
10. Racist and anti-semi used depressions to grow hater about Jewish people

[ffoulkes-2009]

Syria is like a drug pusher to these stupid Hamas knuckle draggers. They keep giving them their drugs (in this case rockets), and Hamas shoots them off, drawing Israel''s ire, suffers, then goes looking for more...What a bunch of morons. Quit firing rockets, and you and your people quit dying...simplicity itself.

[boilingmad]

Any re-opening of the Eygptian-Gaza borders, must include at least Eygptian, Israeli, and a UN rotating member nation to conduct inspections. Anything less is idiocy, those rockets and arms didn''t miracle themselves into Gaza.

[rusure5]

Re: "The brave men and women of the Is. Army are fighting the Islamic Terrorists, our enemies."

Posted by hamiltonGRAD

The people of Palestine are neither terrorists nor are they my enemies.

If they are your enemies, then you should join the IDF and go help them murder Palestinian women and children, you sniveling little coward.

[hamiltongrad]

The brave men and women of the Is. Army are fighting the Islamic Terrorists, our enemies.

[vdema-2009]

We should learn from our failed negotiations with N. Korea that a cease fire is worthless as a prelude to discussions when dealing with extreme terror.Israel must first exterminate Hamas,then deal with the survivors.Extermination is the ultimate motivation for negotiations.