Syria’s foreign minister Walid Muallem said on Saturday that the Syrian delegation is refusing the U.S. request for direct negotiations with the rebels unless Secretary of State John Kerry apologize for his remarks at the Geneva II talks.

“The Americans asked us to negotiate directly with them in Montreux,” Muallem told Syrian state reporters during the flight home from 10 days of talks in Switzerland.

In his opening remarks at the conference, Kerry said that Syria’s embattled President Bashar Assad “will not be part” of the next Syrian government.

“There is no way, not possible in the imagination, that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain legitimacy to govern,” Kerry said.

It’s hard to believe how unskilled this man is in the art of speaking to folks who aren’t from Boston.

According to the Syrian state news agency SANA, Muallem said his delegation refused to come back for direct talks with the opposition “before Secretary of State John Kerry apologized for what he said at the conference.”

I’ll bet Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, who had to apologize to the self same John Kerry for pointing out his messianic complex and his carving for the Nobel Peace Prize, will enjoy watching his nemesis eating crow.

Muallem was also not buying the whole “coalition of the so-called ‘opposition’” business.

“If they do not abandon their illusions, they will get a rude shock because we are a country of institutions and a constitution and we have a president of the republic,” he said on Saturday.

Muallem said it was “a stain” on the opposition that they refused to sign a declaration condemning “terrorism” in the country.

See? That’s how you deal with rebellion in the Middle East. First, you get America out of the picture.

According to AFP, more than 136,000 people have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the conflict in March 2011, and more than 2.4 million Syrians have become refugees.

BDS Syria!

Syrians demonstrating in Geneva in favor of President Assad.

On Friday morning, Hundreds of Syrians gathered in front of the UN’s Headquarters in Geneva to express their support for the motherland, Syria, its army and Syria’s official delegation to Geneva 2 conference, SANA reported.

Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi told the participants in the march that the Assad government is prepared to deal with the opposition on the matter of “love of the homeland and drawing its future.”

136,000 dead so far – that’s a lot of love.

The IDF has released an exclusive video that offers a rare glimpse into advanced combat training to defend Israel against Hezbollah.

The footage shows the elite Combat Engineering Battalion 601 in a simulated takeover of a Hezbollah position. The simulation prepared soldiers for the moment of truth against Hezbollah, simulating the takeover of a terrorist stronghold and an attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

Hezbollah continues to arm itself with long-range missiles and other weapons capable of striking any part of Israel. The terrorist army in southern Lebanon, armed by Syria and Iran and financed by Tehran, has an estimated 80,000-100,000 missiles.

The Israeli Air Force has carried out pre-emptive bombings of several convoys of advanced Soviet-made missiles that were destined for Hezbollah from Syria.

The IDF has developed sophisticated methods to stop Hezbollah, whose size and strength have grown dramatically since the 34-day Second Lebanon War in 2006.

“The best way to maintain our readiness and remain sharp is to train,” said the battalion’s commander, Lt. Col. Yanai Manor. “We try as much as possible to simulate events that could occur in reality.”

Al Qaeda terrorists already have set up three bases in Turkey after having established a presence in Syria, IDF Intelligence Chief Maj.- Gen. Aviv Kochavi told a national security conference in Tel Aviv.

“Syria is projecting its conflict to the whole region. Those blotches (on the map) in Turkey are no mistake by the graphic artist and it is a short way from there into Europe,” Kochavi said.

Turkey has denied that Al Qaeda is allowing Al Qaeda to operate within its borders, but Kochavi’s spokeswoman provided Reuters with a map showing where the terrorist bases are located.

The head of IDF Intelligence said on Wednesday that enemy countries have 170,000 missiles ready to be fired on Israel, a threat that is worse than the Iranian nuclear program.

The numbers have been known before the sum total was announced by Intelligence Director Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi. It has been reported dozens of times that Hezbollah has anywhere between 60,000 and 100,000 missiles It also is a given that Syria, Hamas and Sinai terrorists have an arsenal in the tens of thousands.

Kochavi, speaking at a security conference in Tel Aviv, also said that cyber warfare is the greatest revolution in warfare since the invention of gunpowder and that Israel.

Israeli spokesman said “no comment” on reports from Lebanon that the Israeli Air Force bombed Syrian missiles destined for Hezbollah.

Explosions were reported in the Syrian port city of Latakia, which previously has been targeted and presumably by Israel to prevent “game-changing” weapons from being smuggled into Lebaon for Hezbollah.

Several Lebanese new sources as well as the Lebanese army reported that Israeli planes entered Lebanese airspace at low altitudes and remained in the air for more than one hour.

Recently published photographs of people allegedly tortured by the regime of Syrian President Bassar al-Assad brought out the Nazi comparisons Wednesday by Syrian opposition leader Ahmed Jarba.

Speaking to the Geneva II talks, he said, “The pictures of torture are unprecedented except in the Nazi camps during the Second World War.”

The photos were provided by a Syrian military photographer who defected and showed evidence of the methodical murder of more than 11,000 people arrested by Assad’s forces.

The pictures are grounds for charging Syrian President Bassar al-Assad with war crimes, but his regime rejected the timing of the release of the report prior to the Geneva II conference as “categorical evidence that its goal … is to undermine efforts aimed at achieving peace in Syria.”

A suicide bomb attack on a Hezbollah neighborhood in Beirut and more clashes between anti and pro-Assad forces in Tripoli have left 12 dead and scores wounded as Lebanon continues on the path to the resumption of the 15-year old civil war that ended in 1990 with Syrian domination.

The bomb blast in the Hezbollah neighborhood of Haret Herek killed at least five people and wounded more than 45 others. It was the second attack in almost the same spot in the past week, and one retired Lebanese general told Al Jazeera, “We have to expect more and more operations against the public. Why are the public a target? Because they want to put direct pressure on Hezbollah to withdraw from Lebanon.”

An Al Qaeda linked terrorist group took responsibility for the suicide car bomb blast shortly before noon Tuesday. Witnesses said they saw a man deriving his KIA vehicle, with a stolen license plate, at high speed and “honking his horn like a mad man” seconds before it blew up.

Hezbollah is getting a taste of its own poison, facing suicide attacks that have been one of its favorite methods of terrorizing Lebanon, such as the savage attack that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Harari and 21 others. Syria has been blamed for involvement in the car bomb explosion

In Tripoli, one person died and several others were wounded in gunfire on Tuesday, bring to seven the death since the most recent eruption of violence on Friday. Alawites, who back Syrian President Bassar al-Assad, and anti-Assad Sunni Muslim gangs fired mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns in fighting that raged through the early morning hours. At least six have been killed and more than 55 others wounded since Friday.

The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly, commenting on the suicide bombing in Beirut, said  the explosion presents “a further deeply disturbing act of indiscriminate terror” and that “such acts cannot be justified and are contrary to the interests of all the Lebanese.”

The U.S. Embassy in Beirut, for what it’s worth, denounced the attack and offered its condolences to the victims and their families via Twitter.

It is nice that officials in the Obama administration know how to use social media, but they have been unaware of their failure to understand that the axis of evil has to be fought and not “engaged.”

The result now is the spread of civil war across Israel’s northern border, from the Golan Heights to the east and westward to the Mediterranean Sea.

The instability keeps the locals busy killing each other, which is fine as long as they don’t realize they could simply join forces and take out their anger on Israel.

The United States has backed an ultimatum by Syrian opposition forces to rescind an invitation to Iran to joint the Geneva II peace talks scheduled for Wednesday unless Tehran publicly accepts that the conference will establish a political process to end the rule of Syrian President Bassar al-Assad.

The peace talks appeared to be over before they were to start following an ultimatum Monday by the  Syrian National Coalition that the invitation be rescinded by Monday night.

“The Syrian Coalition announces that they will withdraw their attendance in Geneva II unless Ban Ki-moon retracts Iran’s invitation,” it said in a Twitter post.

The coalition said it could accept Iran at the talks only if it were to remove its forces  fighting with  to maintain his control of war-torn country.

Given pre-conditions by Assad and the Opposition concerning a future government, the chances of anything positive coming out of Geneva II are nil.