After being quite comfortable with al-Assad’s tyranny for decades, Israel now fears what Syrian democracy could do and is bent on sabotaging it.
The end of 2024 delivered a surprising turn of events in the 13-year-long war in Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed spectacularly when faced with a limited operation by rebel forces.
Amid the turmoil, Israel expanded its occupation of Syrian land in the south of the country, expelling hundreds of Syrians from their homes. It also launched a devastating campaign of aerial bombardment, wiping out the Syrian air force and military capabilities. Some of the bombardment was so massive that it registered as minor earthquakes. Dozens of people have been killed as a result of these strikes.
Israeli soldiers have also repeatedly shot at civilians protesting the occupation. These people come from communities that have long resisted Israel’s supposed archenemies, the al-Assad regime and Iran. These developments are yet further proof that the Israeli claims about fighting only “the axis of resistance” and seeking friendship with the people of the region are utterly vacuous.
Israel has clearly chosen to begin relations with the new government of its neighbour with war. It has positioned itself as the biggest spoiler of efforts to stabilise Syria and establish legitimate, democratic governance.
It is important to remember that Israel was quite comfortable with a prominent member of the “axis of resistance”, the al-Assad regime. For decades, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad made sure Israel’s northern border stayed quiet. After the signing in 1974 of the “separation of forces” agreement, his regime made no more attempts to regain the Golan Heights, which Syria had lost to Israel during the 1967 war due to al-Assad’s failed policies as defence minister.
The status quo did not change under Hafez’s son Bashar. As a state that maintained de facto peace with Israel without a treaty, Syria posed great benefits to both the United States and Israel – in some ways, even more than Arab states that had fully normalised relations with the Zionist entity.
For instance, the al-Assad regime’s association with the “axis of resistance” allowed it to be in a special position to share intelligence and barter on wanted individuals and groups in exchange for its own survival. Israel viewed it as a rare prize that allowed it to violate Syria’s sovereignty at will and divert attention from its own crimes due to the sheer scale of regime violence against the Syrian people.
When the Syrian revolution started in 2011, this was bad news for both Bashar al-Assad and Israel. The Israeli government made clear to its Western allies that it did not want the regime to collapse.
In 2013, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government helped US President Barack Obama’s administration walk back its threat to strike the al-Assad regime over its use of chemical weapons in Ghouta outside Damascus. It proposed a deal between the US and Russia to have the Syrian chemical arsenal removed, which was then used as an excuse by Washington not to make good on its “red line” promise.
Israel welcomed Russia’s intervention in 2015 to help keep Bashar al-Assad in power and even provided the Russian army with drones that were used against the Syrian opposition. In 2018, it “approved” the regime’s takeover of rebel-held territory in southern Syria as part of a negotiated Israeli-Russian deal.
Netanyahu declared at the time: “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime. For 40 years, not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.”
When Israel launched its latest encroachment on Syrian territory in September, two months before Bashar al-Assad’s fall, there were no bullets fired. The Syrian president’s response was to ignore the expansion of the Israeli occupation and claim publicly it never happened.
From September to December, Israel added 500sq km (192sq miles) of Syrian land to the Syrian territory that it has already occupied since 1967. This area includes the entire demilitarised zone of the 1974 “separation of forces” agreement as well as areas beyond it as Israeli media claim Israeli troops control 95 percent of Quneitra province. The Israeli army has expelled scores of Syrians from their villages and towns and penetrated as far as Quneitra city and the town of al-Baath. The Syrians of the south could not celebrate the downfall of the regime they had long hoped for.
Analysts have offered different takes on why Israel has invaded new Syrian territories. Some see “strategic” and “military” advantages in having positions so close to Damascus. Others see it as a conquest designed to barter for Syrian recognition of the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights. Still others point to the “religious right” and their declarations that “the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus”. Regardless of how this invasion was framed among Israeli decision-makers, it fits into a historical pattern: Israel has been expansionist since its foundation, including under secular and left-wing governments.
Beyond the intrinsic value of its newly “conquered” land, the expanded occupation aims to create a new factor of instability for the new Syrian government. This serves two purposes. Ideally, it becomes a pressure point on the new authorities to weaken Syrian solidarity with the Palestinian cause. But even if this fails, it will serve as a continued source of destabilisation, tension and pressure within Syrian politics that can deform the democratic trajectory of post-al-Assad Syria. Foreign occupation of territory often has this effect on domestic politics, including in the Middle East, where authoritarian rule has largely been justified with Israeli aggression and occupation.
Israel’s entrenchment, once secured, will be very difficult to undo – and will affect the entire new political experiment in Damascus. There is an urgent need to confront it, especially because Israel is trying to take advantage of Syria’s distraction.
However, the approach of the new authorities has been to try to take away all pretexts for the Israeli aggression and rely on the international community to rein it in. Syria’s new de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has been explicit in this approach and left nothing hidden: While declaring that Israel had “crossed the lines of engagement”, he also noted that Syria did not have the military capacity to confront the Israeli army at this point and would not allow any party to use Syrian territory to drag it into such a war.
Syria’s new authorities are undoubtedly walking a tightrope. On one side, they face a serious threat of state collapse and on the other popular pressure to stabilise the economy and provide services, which can be massively facilitated by the lifting of sanctions by Western powers allied with Israel.
Notwithstanding the early “comforting” noises from the new authorities, the chances of Israel pressuring Syria onto a “normalisation” path are weak. An isolationist minority could arise that argues for improved ties with Israel and an end to Syria’s historical support for the Palestinian cause, but ironically, the chances of this happening dwindle with every new strike Israel launches.
There is little support for normalisation not only among the general population but also among the rebel rank and file, who will become the backbone of the new army and state security apparatus. The group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the de facto new authority in Damascus, has been historically averse to such engagement with Israel and so are the significant number of Palestinians among rebel fighters and commanders in Syria. Pushing in this direction could trigger internal rebellion.
Israel has made clear that it will not wait and see how the new Syrian government will turn out. The Israeli approach, always, is preemptive aggression, almost regardless of who is on the other side.
In the Syrian case, however, Israel knows that solidarity between Syrians and Palestinians has remained strong for decades despite attempts to undermine it. Since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, both Syrians and Palestinians (particularly in Gaza) have held demonstrations in solidarity with each other.
Israel also knows that the free Syria cause enjoys immense moral legitimacy and strength among Syrians and Arabs as a whole. That is why it will seek through continued military manoeuvres and diplomatic sabotage to prevent the new Syrian government from maintaining stability at home and attaining legitimacy abroad.
The expanding Israeli aggression necessitates a united front, including on the level of activism. All those who lament Bashar al-Assad’s fall and gloat over the Israeli bombardment of Syria should do well to reflect on why Israel is attacking now. Clearly a cohesive, democratic Syria would be a much stronger proponent of Palestinian liberation than the Assadist tyranny ever was.