Israeli troops on Sunday battled hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to burst across Syria's frontier with the Golan Heights, killing a reported 20 people and wounding scores more in the second outbreak of deadly violence in the border area in less than a month.
The clashes, marking the anniversary of the Arab defeat in the 1967 Mideast war, drew Israeli accusations that Syria was orchestrating the violence to shift attention away from a bloody crackdown on opposition protests at home. The marchers, who had organised on Facebook, passed by Syrian and UN outposts on their way to the front lines.
"The Syrian government is trying to create a provocation," said Israel's chief military spokesman, Brig Gen Yoav Mordechai. "This border has been quiet for decades, but only now with all the unrest in Syrian towns is there an attempt to draw attention to the border."
Human rights groups say President Bashar Assad's forces killed at least 25 people in northern Syria over the weekend, and another 65 activists were killed in the central city of Hama on Friday, as anti-government protests spread through the country demanding his resignation.
There was no Syrian comment on why the protesters were allowed to storm the border, apparently undisturbed by authorities. But Syria's state-run media portrayed the event as a spontaneous uprising of Palestinian youths from a nearby refugee camp.
After nightfall Sunday, Syria's state TV said there would be an open-ended sit-in at the border, and thousands more protesters were on their way.
The protests began around 11 am with what appeared to be several dozen youths, brought in on buses. It gained strength through the day.
By evening, the crowd had swelled to more than 1,000 people, who milled about, prayed and chanted slogans in an uneasy standoff with Israeli troops in the distance. The army bolstered its positions, posting a dozen armored vehicles and jeeps along the border road.
A small group of youths managed to cut through a recently fortified coil of barbed-wire and took up positions in a trench inside a buffer zone about 20 yards (meters) from a final border fence. Israeli troops periodically opened fire at young activists jumping into the ditch, sending puffs of soil flying into the air.
As the standoff stretched into the evening, Israeli forces fired heavy barrages of tear gas to break up the crowds. Hundreds of people fled the area in panic, while some 20 people laying on the ground received treatment. It was not immediately clear whether the crowd would return to the front lines.
At nightfall, crowds of people fell to the ground in Muslim prayer, and several small groups lit bonfires, indicating the standoff would continue.
Israel had promised a tough response after being caught off guard in last month's demonstrations, when troops killed more than a dozen people in clashes along the Syrian and Lebanese borders. In Syria, hundreds of unarmed protesters managed to breach the border and entered the Israel-controlled Golan for several hours.
The May 15 unrest occurred on the anniversary of Israel's birth in 1948, a day the Palestinians refer to as the "nakba," or catastrophe.
Sunday's clashes marked the "naksa," or setback, the term the Palestinians use for the defeat in the 1967 Mideast war. During that war, Israel conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula from Egypt in just six days of fighting.
Israel returned Sinai to Egypt under a 1979 peace accord, and withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
The Palestinians seek the West Bank and east Jerusalem, along with Gaza, for a future state, while Syria demands a return of the Golan, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel which Israel has annexed, as the price for peace.
Still, until last month, Syria has steadfastly kept its border with Israel quiet for nearly 40 years, fueling the Israeli accusations that Syria was trying to draw attention away from the months of protests that have left more than 1,200 Syrians dead.
Ahead of Sunday's unrest, the army said it would deploy large numbers of forces, along with anti-riot weaponry like tear gas and water cannons, to prevent a repeat of the May clashes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered forces to show "maximum restraint," but also said Israel would prote.
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