February 28, 2025

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Israeli Strikes Destabilize Syria at a Critical Time

AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy

Israel struck sites in southern Syria again earlier this week, in what has become a regular occurrence since the fall of the Assad regime late last year. The strikes come at a particularly precarious time, as Syria’s interim leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is attempting to forge national unity throughout the country and recently held a two-day conference aimed at bringing together disparate groups. The closing statement of the conference condemned Israel’s recent strikes in the country, which are destabilizing Syria at a critical time. At risk to his own legitimacy, al-Sharra has offered conciliatory statements about Israel, in an effort to calm the situation. During Assad’s reign, a tacit agreement existed between Syria and Israel on limiting Iranian and Hezbollah entrenchment near the border. Since assuming power late last year, Syria’s interim government has intercepted more than a dozen weapons shipments destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon, demonstrating a good faith effort to crack down on militant activity within Syria’s borders.

If Israel wants a stable situation on its border, as it has claimed, then repeated strikes on Syrian territory are unlikely to bring about this end state, indeed, just the opposite. The Israeli political and security establishment likely view their repeated airstrikes, and several ground incursions, as a way to divide and conquer within Syria, keeping the fledgling government off balance and thus, unable to make progress on exercising a monopoly on the use of force over sovereign Syrian territory. This is a dangerous gambit, however, and one that has backfired for Israel before. For years, at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel built up Hamas in an effort to counterbalance the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, a strategy that was implemented to indefinitely postpone any serious discussions over the creation of a Palestinian state. If Syria is kept in a constant state of insecurity, Damascus will be less likely to be able to push Israel back from the buffer zone or to reclaim the Golan Heights. The United Nations and several member states have pointed out that the Israeli strikes in Syria are a violation of the ceasefire agreement that dates back to 1974. The strikes have been condemned by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to the UN Secretary General.

Syrian leadership is also demanding that Israel withdraw from territory it seized after the fall of the Assad regime, a request that the Israelis have pushed back against. The Israeli military released a statement that said: “The presence of military assets and forces in the southern part of Syria constitutes a threat” to Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz calls it a “new policy” of Israel attempting to shape a demilitarized zone in southern Syria. He goes on to declare that Israel will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon–– a reference to the nearly two-decade Israeli occupation of that area between 1982 and 2000, when Israel ostensibly invaded Lebanon to root out Palestinian militants. The occupation played a significant role in the metastasizing of Lebanese Hezbollah.

Forging national unity in Syria will be enough of a challenge on its own but is only further exacerbated by Israel’s repeated strikes and refusal to withdraw from a buffer zone on the border. The new Syrian government, now led by members of what was formerly known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist terror group that operated in the Idlib Province, has a host of other challenges it is attempting to deal with. This week saw violent clashes between Alawites, the minority Shia sect that enjoyed access and privilege during the Assad regime, and the security forces. Furthermore, both the Israeli strikes and repeated statements from Israeli political leaders that its military will not leave the buffer area prompted protests and demonstrations across Syria this week. Netanyahu demanded the complete demilitarization of southern Syria and said Israel would not accept any armed presence in the Quneitra, Deraa, or Suwayda provinces.

Israeli strikes aside, Syria is struggling to get its economy back on track, still suffocating from U.S. and European sanctions that remain in place from before Assad was toppled. The other issue dominating Al-Sharaa's agenda is how to get the Kurds, especially the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which operate in northeastern Syria, to dissolve their armed militias and integrate into a unified Syrian army instead of operating as an autonomous entity. Just yesterday, Abdullah Ocalan, the longtime leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), released a statement from prison calling on members of the group to lay down their arms. Türkiye considers the SDF and the PKK one and the same and has long clashed with SDF fighters on the Syrian-Turkish border, despite the fact that the SDF was the United States’ most effective ally in the fight against the Islamic State. In response to Ocalan's statement, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi suggested that the PKK leader's declaration was "not related to us in Syria," demonstrating how difficult and complex any Kurdish disarmament and integration into a Syrian military will be. An October PKK attack against a Turkish defense company in Ankara could have signaled unwillingness with certain factions of the organization to entertain anything that resembles a ceasefire. It is not uncommon for splintering to occur in the lead-up to, and in the immediate aftermath of, peace deals and negotiated settlements, with hardline elements that refuse to move away from violence and vowing to continue the fight.