Attachments
By Dareen Khalifa and Mairav Zonszein
After the Assad regime was overthrown, Israel immediately began treating the new authorities in Damascus as a potential security threat, taking a series of aggressive military actions. This approach risks pushing Syria toward the very scenarios Israel worries about.
The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 was celebrated across much of the Middle East. In Israel, the news was also met with satisfaction, but with consternation mixed in. The regime’s exit dealt a major blow to the Iran-led axis confronting Israel, removing its only other state member and cutting the supply route from Iran to Hizbollah in Lebanon. But in the eyes of Israeli officials, it also raised two troubling possibilities: either Syria might fall apart, giving Tehran a second chance to assert its influence, or a Sunni Islamist axis backed by Türkiye might arise to replace the Iranian one. In the latter respect, Israeli officials evinced considerable suspicion about the background of Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, and the group he leads, Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was affiliated with al-Qaeda before it broke with the global jihadist movement in 2016. For several years before it spearheaded the rebel offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad, HTS ruled a de facto autonomous enclave in the north-western province of Idlib, with Turkish army outposts along the southern boundary helping keep the regime’s forces at bay. HTS was not necessarily close to Ankara, but it was closer to Türkiye than to any other state.
In view of these possibilities, Israel set out to make certain that the new Syria could present no material threat. In the two days following Assad’s overthrow, it carried out nearly 500 airstrikes, destroying much of the Syrian military’s weaponry and stockpiles, reportedly including chemical weapons. On top of that, Israel sent ground forces stationed on the occupied Golan Heights deeper into Syrian territory, into the 235 sq km demilitarised buffer zone established by the 1974 disengagement agreement between the countries. The Israeli army has since set up nine outposts in villages, erected checkpoints, carried out patrols, conducted raids and fired at Syrians protesting its incursion. Israel also took up a new position atop the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, from which its soldiers can see both Damascus and Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. Senior Israeli officials have indicated that Israel’s presence there is indefinite.
Israel has declared its intention to establish a wider “demilitarised” zone stretching across southern Syria.
Beyond this new buffer and the additional areas its troops are now patrolling, Israel has declared its intention to establish a wider “demilitarised” zone stretching across southern Syria. It has reached out to the Druze minority in Syria’s south west, inviting Druze to come work in the Israeli-occupied Golan and promising to protect those in Syria from attack. Israel has also been lobbying the Trump administration to use draconian U.S. sanctions imposed on the ousted Assad regime, which remain in force, as leverage with Syria’s interim government. It wants Washington to tie tough conditions to lifting these measures, as well as others applied to HTS itself, pursuant to the group’s designation as a terrorist organisation.
If Israel persists in this approach – without at least curbing its military action, tempering its rhetoric and adding a complement of active diplomacy – it risks pushing Syria toward one of the very scenarios it says it wants to avoid: fostering chaos that Iran and/or jihadist militants could exploit, or nudging the new government in Damascus closer to Ankara.
Rocking a Rickety Boat
Events on the outskirts of Damascus in late February illustrate both the precariousness of Syria’s post-Assad transition and the limits of Israel’s ability to shape Syrian dynamics. On 28 February, tempers flared in Jaramana, a partly Druze suburb of Damascus (60km from the Israel-Syria border), where armed Druze factions hold a degree of sway. A series of altercations between these factions and the interim government’s newly constituted security forces culminated in a firefight that left a security officer dead. The next day, the security forces staged raids that led to a civilian death, exacerbating tensions. Israel’s defence minister, saying the Druze were in danger from an “extremist Islamist terror regime”, announced Israel’s intention to defend them, and Israeli media quoted anonymous Druze residents pleading for such protection. But several influential Druze quickly distanced themselves from any such request. Within a day, Damascus had reached an understanding with the Druze factions and leaders from the predominantly Druze town of Suwaida, de-escalating the situation.
Such incidents are likely to recur as Syria emerges from more than a decade of civil war, and Israel’s responses threaten to rock what is already a rickety boat. Its messages to the Druze, along with expressions of support for the Kurdish minority that has carved out a quasi-autonomous area in Syria’s north east, could undermine the standing of these groups within a Syrian society that is broadly hostile to Israeli intervention. Its belligerence toward Damascus lends itself to the interpretation that Israel seeks to keep Syria weak, fragmented and in disarray. Israel had a modus vivendi with Assad – akin to those it has with regimes in Egypt, Jordan and some Gulf Arab states, which impose stability aligned with Israeli interests – but it clearly does not view Syria’s new authorities the same way. Israel’s foreign minister has advocated for a federal Syria made up of autonomous regions, an echo of its longstanding approach (for instance, toward Lebanon) that seeks to weaken its adversaries by encouraging their division into ethno-sectarian cantons at the central state’s expense.
Israeli officials describe creation of a wider buffer zone inside Syria as a precautionary step. Israel has seen its presence in the Golan Heights, which it occupied in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981, as critical to its security. Today, that concept of security is much more expansive. Since the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas, Israeli officials have adopted a mindset that assesses risks based on capacity and potential rather than past actions or stated intentions, which in turn allows for freer pre-emptive military action along or beyond the country’s borders. They say Israel’s main goals are to ensure that Syria does not threaten it or neighbours like Jordan, protects minorities, cooperates in eliminating the Assad regime’s remaining chemical weapons and prevents the transfer of arms from Iran to Hizbollah. Occupying or imposing a demilitarised zone in southern Syria allows Israel to put teeth in these demands.
Israeli Doubts
Israeli policymakers feel that scepticism toward the new Syrian leadership is warranted. They do not believe that HTS has left its jihadist past behind. They suspect that al-Sharaa’s apparent pragmatism stems solely from the urgent need for fuel, wheat and an end to sanctions that prevent the interim government from reviving the economy. Such doubts may be understandable; indeed, some Syrians share them. But they overlook how HTS evolved over the past decade, severing its ties with al-Qaeda, engaging in fierce battles with both al-Qaeda and ISIS, and repositioning itself as a strictly Syrian Islamist-nationalist group focused on fighting Assad and governing the territory it held in north-western Syria. While ruling Idlib, al-Sharaa leant increasingly toward conciliation of minorities, reaching out to Christians and Druze, offering them protection, reopening churches and returning properties that rebels had confiscated. But Israeli officials think that, when push comes to shove, the new rulers in Damascus will be unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to control the jihadist elements that remain in the country. As evidence, they point tothe early March violence in Syria’s coastal areas, where in response to a coordinated attack by pro-Assad insurgents that killed government security officers, pro-government forces committed atrocities against civilians, the majority of whom were from the Alawite minority.
Notably, Israeli officials voice concern about both the Syrian government’s current weakness and its hypothetical future strength, fuelling perceptions among others that Israel’s strategy is muddled. Most of Israel’s actions thus far have aimed to hinder Damascus in consolidating power throughout the country, for fear that a stronger Syrian government could eventually turn hostile. Yet Israeli officials are also wary that the new Syrian authorities will be incapable of prevailing over jihadist and pro-Iranian groups – or even the much smaller number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who were freed (along with countless Syrian civilians) from Assad’s prisons.
Israeli officials have ... openly worried about Türkiye’s burgeoning influence and leverage over the new Syrian government.
Israeli officials have also openly worried about Türkiye’s burgeoning influence and leverage over the new Syrian government. While HTS was ruling Idlib, it had ambivalent relations with Ankara – which had adopted the UN Security Council’s designation of it as a terrorist organisation and preferred to back rival rebel factions. The Turkish army created a cordon around the province not to protect HTS per se but as part of a deal with Assad’s patron Russia to keep the north-western front quiet and prevent another influx of Syrian refugees into Türkiye. But some Israeli officials, like many others, overstate the degree of Turkish backing for HTS, even believing that Ankara orchestrated the HTS takeover of Damascus. Events after Assad fell have reinforced that mistaken impression: days later, elated senior Turkish officials met with al-Sharaa in the Syrian capital, and the two states have subsequently exchanged a series of high-level visits.
Israel is also watching developments in Syria’s north east, where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) exercise a measure of self-rule. To Türkiye, the SDF is a foe; Ankara backed militias that reversed territorial gains the SDF made while the rebel drive on Damascus was under way. But the U.S. backs the SDF, a key partner of the coalition it assembled to smash the remnants of ISIS. Israel fears that President Donald Trump will upset the delicate balance in the north east by withdrawing U.S. forces, as he repeatedly threatened to do during his first term in office. He may be even more likely to do so following the landmark 10 March agreement between the SDF and Damascus, in which the Kurdish-led group promised to integrate its civilian and military structures into those of the central state by year’s end. In that event, Ankara could further extend its reach, deepening Israeli concerns that a powerful rival – a NATO member, no less – is wielding significant influence in a neighbouring state.
In the meantime, however, Israel’s military action, expansionism and advocacy for maintaining Syria’s economic isolation all increase Damascus’s reliance on Ankara as a potential counterweight – raising further questions as to whether Israel’s actions are serving its goals.
Race against the Clock
For the moment, having lost the bulk of its military hardware, Syria has little to no capacity to harm Israel, even should it want to – and it is adamant that it does not. Syrians are consumed with rebuilding their war-torn country and working out relations between state and society. The new leaders have signalled privately and publicly that Syria under their reign will not be a launchpad for attacks on any neighbouring state, Israel included. Al-Sharaahas stated that Syria will keep abiding by the 1974 disengagement agreement and asked outside powers to ensure that Israel, which has violated that accord, goes back to doing so, too. He called on Israel to stop its airstrikes in Syria and to withdraw from the additional Syrian territory it has seized since Assad’s downfall.
The new Syrian leadership’s aversion to confronting Israel stems from its recognition of the power imbalance between the countries. It knows it has nothing to gain. Moreover, its top priorities are to stabilise the country and revive its economy. Establishing constructive relations with a wide range of regional and international players, and avoiding problems with previous adversaries, are pillars of this strategy. The balance of forces favouring Israel is unlikely to change even if Syria recovers well from its decade-plus of devastation.
Yet Israel persists in its evident attempts to undercut al-Sharaa, which risks keeping Syria mired in instability. Seeking to cultivate allies among minorities, such as the Druze in the south or the Kurds in the north east, risks heightening intercommunal tensions to the point of open conflict. While Israel may prefer a weak and fractured Syria to a strong one led by an Islamist and backed by Türkiye, that scenario presents security risks of its own to Israel. Most obviously, it could provide an opening for Iran to exploit the vacuum by empowering armed groups rooted in the old regime and re-establishing routes for sending weapons to Lebanon.
Israeli officials have been asking the Trump administration to keep sanctions and foreign terrorist designations [in Syria] in place.
Other Israeli actions that undermine Syria’s fragile transition could likewise backfire. Israeli officials have been asking the Trump administration to keep sanctions and foreign terrorist designations in place, so as not to provide the interim government with a “free lunch”, as an Israeli official put it. Israel wants Washington to attach conditions to an incremental, sequential process for lifting the sanctions and designations, requiring Damascus to take tangible actions that demonstrate its commitment to protecting minorities and ensuring security. Yet such a process would take time, and al-Sharaa is in a race against the clock. The Syrian economy is collapsing, leaving the country plagued by severe shortages of food, shelter and energy. Syrians are growing increasingly impatient with their dire hardships, fuelling criticism of the new authorities and sowing divisions. The violence on the coast in early March is a grisly reminder of what may await Syria under a weak leadership largely cut off from outside support.
If Israel does not modify its approach to post-Assad Syria, it risks turning a state that seems ready for accommodation into an adversary that could adopt a more vocal stance against its actions. Continued Israeli aggression, attempts to “demilitarise” southern Syria and interference in Syrian politics may push the interim government further onto the defensive and make it more likely that it deepens defence cooperation with Türkiye, to deter further Israeli expansion. Israel’s attempts to reach out to Syria’s minorities have so far failed to yield results, with both Druze leaders and the Kurdish-led SDF publicly pulling closer to Damascus rather than drifting away. The latest such indicator is the 10 March agreement between al-Sharaa and the SDF.
Rethinking Israel’s Syria Strategy
Better would be for Israel to view the new reality in Syria as a strategic opportunity. For the first time in decades, Iran lacks influence in Damascus, which instead is controlled by a group hostile to Tehran and eager to forge ties with the West and neighbouring states. Yet maintaining suffocating U.S. sanctions could provide pathways for renewed Iranian meddling. Rather than opposing sanctions relief for Syria, Israel may better serve its interests by encouraging the U.S. to be more proactive and specific in articulating the benchmarks Syria should meet, including upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement and reaffirming commitment to regional security, including regarding Israel. Moreover, in addition to sanctions, the U.S. retains significant further leverage over Damascus, including influence over international reconstruction funding, as well as the ability to remove – and, if it sees fit, to reinstate – terrorist designations.
Israel could suggest that Washington link those levers to clear commitments by Damascus, backed up with action, to eliminate any threat from within Syria to neighbouring states. Israel could also work with the U.S. and European partners to ensure regular inspections and the dismantling under international supervision of any remnants of the former regime’s chemical weapons capabilities. Furthermore, coordination with the U.S. and Jordan could more promptly address any security concerns Israel may have in southern Syria, leveraging the U.S. garrison at the Tanf military base in eastern Syria as part of this strategy. Diplomacy along these lines would be much better than the present approach, which is heightening the danger that post-Assad Syria will become a failed state, to everyone’s detriment, including Israel’s.