on the eve of yom kippur..

war clouds continue to gather in the Holy Land...

from DEBKA:

After Syria moved tank units up to the Lebanese Beqaa Valley border Tuesday, Oct. 7, Israel raised the alert level for Yom Kippur on its borders with Syria and Lebanon and placed its Air Force and emergency first aid teams on standby in the event of Syrian or coordinated Syrian-Hizballah attacks.

Israeli embassies and Jewish institutions worldwide were also placed on high terror alert. Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said recently that his promised retaliation for the death of Imad Mughniyeh “is coming.” There is no backing off from this decision or from carrying out the “big surprise” against the enemy, he said.

Damascus and the Lebanese Hizballah are closely aligned.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Syrian tank concentration on the Lebanese border Tuesday was Damascus' second military movement against its neighbor; three weeks ago, Syrian commando units took up positions on the North Lebanese border. In the first deployment, their tanks and armored vehicles were kept some 3-10 km to the rear of frontline commando forces. In the second, much closer to the Israeli border, armor and tanks have been deployed at the front.

These military movements sent Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak on an unannounced trip north Tuesday to check the state of readiness of the IDF’s disposition on the Syrian and Lebanese borders. He cautioned the outpost commanders to exercise maximum vigilance in the coming days. The border seems quiet, he said, but commanders must take care never to permit a repeat of the Yom Kippur War exactly 35 years ago when Israel was caught napping by a Syrian invasion.

Our sources report that Washington, Jerusalem and Beirut are taking into account the possibility of Damascus seizing the moment of the total shutdown in Israel for 25 hours from Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 8, to Thursday night, Oct. 9, for Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) to launch its military forces against northern Lebanon or the Golan.

The West Bank was sealed off and Israel’s border terminals with Jordan and Egypt closed from early Wednesday, Oct. 8.