This week’s sectarian violence in the southwestern Syrian province of Suweida, which ended on July 18 with a ceasefire brokered by the United States, has temporarily upended Israel’s plan to improve relations with the new government in Syria.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara deployed forces to Suweida in mid-July to quell tensions after clashes broke out between the Syrian Druze minority and Bedouin tribesmen.
Shara’s peacekeeping mission went sideways as Syrian forces clashed with Druze fighters, confirming the suspicions of some Druze that the Syrian Islamist regime is not well disposed toward the Druze minority.
During the clashes, hundreds of Druze, Bedouin and Syrian civilians and combatants were killed.
Israel, whose northern border is relatively close to Suweida, was immediately drawn into the conflict. Israel’s motives for intervention were clear.
First, Israel is bent on keeping hostile elements out of this corner of Syria, which is close to the Golan Heights. Second, the plight of Syria’s Druze concerned Israel because it stirred unrest among the 150,000 Israeli Druze and the 20,000 Druze of the Israeli-occupied Golan, which the Israeli army captured during the 1967 Six Day War.
Taking these interrelated factors into account, Israel struck Syrian military forces for the first time since Shara’s appointment as president. Shara assumed office in January after his predecessor, Bashar al-Assad, was deposed by forces loyal to Shara. An ex-jihadist, Shara was formerly aligned with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Islamic State in Syria.
With Assad’s sudden fall, the lengthy Syrian civil war ended.
From July 14 onward, the Israeli Air Force conducted more than 160 strikes across southern Syria, bombing Syrian troops, tanks, vehicles, and military bases in Suweida, Rif Dimashq and Daraa provinces.
Israeli aircraft also bombed the Syrian presidential palace and the Ministry of Defence headquarters in Damascus.
Since the demise of the Assad regime last December, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes aimed at degrading Syria’s military and has occupied the United Nations demilitarized zone near the Golan and the Syrian side of Mount Hermon.
In justifying Israel’s attacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israel Defense Force was working to “save” the Druze and “eliminate” the “regime’s gangs.” He was referring to Syrian government forces that have conducted attacks against the Druze community.
Netanyahu said that Israel would continue to use military means to enforce two red lines in Syria — the demilitarization of the area south of Damascus, near Israel’s border, and the protection of the country’s Druze.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said that Israel would hew to a “demilitarization policy” until Syrian units withdraw from Suweida province.
Claiming that Sharaa had violated both these red lines in recent days, Netanyahu said, “Syria sent an army south of Damascus, into the area that should be demilitarized, and it began to massacre the Druze. We could not accept this in any way. This will also be our policy moving forward. We will not allow military forces to get south of Damascus, we will not allow attacks against the Druze.”
A day after issuing this bold declaration, Netanyahu backtracked, allowing Syrian forces to enter Suweida for 48 hours.
The fighting in Suweida was the third major outbreak of sectarian violence in Syria since Assad’s ouster, renewing fears that Syria could descend into further chaos as Syria’s new leaders attempt to assert their authority over a nation fractured by a 12-year civil war.
Syria’s Christian community, comprising less than two percent of the population today, is equally concerned about its future, as are the Kurds in northern and eastern Syria.
In the wake of the most recent violence, Shara accused Israel of seeking to sow “chaos” and “destruction” in Syria. He referred to Israel as “the Israeli entity.”
Observers believe that Shara’s speech was his most direct condemnation of Israel since he assumed power.
Only days before these unsettling events, Shara signalled he was ready to engage Israel in direct talks. In Azerbaijan, he met Israeli officials, including Netanyahu’s national security advisor Tsachi Henegbi.
In a major break with Syrian policy, he reportedly did not demand the return of the Golan as a condition for achieving a measure of normalization with Israel.
Around this time, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel “will welcome Syria to the peace and normalization circle in the Middle East.”
The violence in Suweida, plus Israel’s response to it, have undermined any immediate prospects for an Israeli rapprochement with Syria.
Some Israeli cabinet ministers oppose this trajectory altogether. The minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, has called for Shara’s assassination, saying he is nothing more than a jihadist in a suit.
Israelis like Chikli believe that Israel would be better served by a divided and fragmented Syria.
More than 40 years ago, Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist and a former official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry, wrote an essay in which he proposed that Israel’s long-term security could potentially be enhanced by encouraging the fragmentation of neighboring Arab states into smaller, ethnically defined entities.
Yinon’s plan, which called for the breakup of Arab countries like Syria into religious or ethnic enclaves, was never officially adopted as state policy. Nonetheless, his ideas have been embraced by some Israeli strategists as a potential means by which to reshape the security environment to Israel’s advantage.
It remains to her seen whether this view will decisively influence Israeli policy in Syria.
From the outset, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio downplayed the Israel-Syria tensions as a “misunderstanding.” He may have been overly optimistic.
In the meantime, the Trump administration let it be known that it disagreed with Israel’s aggressive approach to Syria.
“Regarding Israel’s intervention and activity … the United States did not support recent Israeli strikes,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the other day. “We are engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria at the highest levels, both to address the present crisis and reach a lasting agreement between the two sovereign states.”
It would appear that the Trump administration has imposed a ceasefire on Israel and Syria and stopped the latest wave of violence to convulse Syria. Thomas Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Trump’s special envoy to Syria, was instrumental in arranging the truce.
The combatants have laid down their arms, at least for now. But no one should be under any illusions. Post-Assad Syria is a tinderbox, an unstable nation that will test Israel’s resolve time and time again in the future.