Syria instigated violence on its border with Israel this past weekend when it dispatched Palestinian refugees to the Golan Heights to commemorate the 44 anniversary of the June 1967 war, what Gamal abd el-Nasser called the Naksa. Syrian authorities say that Israeli troops killed 23 on the border, while the Israelis explain that ten people were killed when they triggered landmines on the Syrian side of the border. There are reports that the Palestinians were paid to march, with additional bonuses going to the families of any protester martyred. In any case, the 1967 war is still claiming victims, for just as the Egyptian demagogue Gamal abd el-Nasser willingly tossed away Arab lives for his own personal gain, Bashar al-Assad is doing the same. As the Wall Street Journal notes, it was a diversionary tactic. “We condemn,” a State Department spokesman quoted in the Journal says, “what appears to be an effort by the Syrian government to incite events and draw attention away from its own internal issues.”

The other Syrian border to watch is the one it shares with Turkey, where hundreds of Syrian refugees fled after the recent clashes in the northern Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour. Syrian authorities say that armed gangs ambushed and killed 120 security forces this past weekend. However, as one refugee explained to the Turkish press, “Since the ’80s, residents of Jisr al-Shughour are banned from possessing any kind of weapons, even a hunting rifle…So how can there be armed resistance?” Other reports claim the Muslim Brotherhood was behind it, a story suiting the regime’s larger narrative about the uprising now more than two months old—that it is a sectarian affair driven by Sunni Islamists. Even if the Brotherhood is involved, it is not clear how the heavily armed and armored Syrian security forces, which have used tanks and artillery over the past few weeks, could lose so many people.