SYRIA'S WEALTHY DRAGGED INTO REVOLT

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ISRAEL'S THREE-MINUTE MIRACLE

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THE COSTS OF CYBER- WAR

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The Israeli government is set to pass a bill raising taxes across the board. The Value Added Tax (VAT), which is charged on almost all goods and services, will go up 1 percent to a total of 17 percent. There will also be higher taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. Income tax on higher incomes will also rise. The total fiscal package aims to raise $3.2 billion dollars as Israel’s economy suffers from the economic slowdown in Europe. Exports to Europe have shrunk, and Israel’s budget deficit is growing. Israel’s currency, the shekel, has also weakened against the dollar to a rate of over 4 shekels per dollar. Gas prices are also slated to rise 7 percent on August 1, and will cost almost $4 per gallon. The moves occur as social protests against the rising cost of living continue. Middle-class Israelis say they can no longer make ends meet and lower-income Israelis are growing increasingly desperate. Earlier this month, a protestor set himself on fire and died at a demonstration calling for social justice.

The Syrian government claimed it had seized parts of the northern city of Aleppo from rebel troops, saying it had “purged” the district of Salahhedine and inflicted “great losses” on the rebels. Syrian opposition activists said the fighting in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, continued. The government of Bashar al-Assad launched a major assault on Aleppo over the weekend. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is on his way to the Middle East, said that Assad is hastening his own demise. “If they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people…I think it ultimately will be a nail in Assad’s coffin,” Panetta told reporters on the plane from Washington. “His regime is coming to an end.”

Meanwhile, a Turkish official said the deputy police chief of Syria’s western Latakia city, a brigadier general, defected and fled to Turkey overnight with 11 other Syrian officers.

The camp, about six miles from the Syrian border, has 2000 tents to accommodate the growing number of refugees from the fighting in Syria. Jordanian officials say around 130,000 Syrians have come to Jordan since the fighting began, and numbers have spiked in recent days. “We can only expect that more people will be coming across, more people who will be in need of assistance,” Andrew Harper, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) said at the camp’s opening. ”We are seeing women and children without their husbands, without their fathers, coming across the border.” Syrian troops have tried to prevent refugees from fleeing by mining parts of the border.

Israeli troops opened fire at a Palestinain car at a checkpoint in the West Bank today, killing one person and wounding two others. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Media Line that the driver ignored signals and calls from the border police at the checkpoint to stop. “The policemen’s lives were in danger and they opened fire,” he said. Police have opened an investigation into the incident. Palestinian medical workers said the man in his 40’s who was shot dead and the two others in the car who were slightly wounded were traveling to pray in Jerusalem.