Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria “directed” an Israeli military attack against Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.
“This is a historic day in the history of the Middle East,” he said.
But in a sign of the potential danger that Israel feels from the unknown rulers in Damascus, Netanyahu said that he has ordered the army to occupy the area that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.
“Together with the Minister of Defense, and with the full support of the Cabinet, I ordered the IDF yesterday to occupy the buffer zone and the positions close to it,” he said while visiting the Golan Heights. “We will not allow any hostile forces to establish themselves on our border.”
This is the first time that Israeli forces have been stationed in the buffer zone since the 1974 agreement that established the line of control between Israel and Syria, although they have briefly entered no-man’s land. Since 1974, the buffer zone has been patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and annexed it in 1981.
Israeli leaders are watching events across the border in Syria with a mixture of fear and excitement, as 50 years of imprisonment were lifted in a matter of hours.
“We don’t know much,” said Boaz Shapira, a researcher at the Alma Foundation, a think tank dedicated to the crisis in northern Israel. “The situation we had in Syria in the past – 50 years with the Assad regime – has completely changed.”
Bashar al-Assad was not an ally, but there was an understanding that allowed the countries to get along. Although Israel occasionally treated the wounded in the Syrian civil war, it remained neutral in the war. Israel’s military has for years targeted supply lines to Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in Syria — most notably killing senior Iranian military officials in Damascus, in April — but has avoided targeting the Assad regime itself.
The rebels’ speedy takeover of Damascus means that Israeli leaders will have to assess the implications for their own security.
Iran has now lost one of its most important positions in the region. This will be a reason to celebrate in Israel, which has been fighting the forces supported by Iran in Gaza (Hamas) and Lebanon (Hezbollah) since October last year.
Netanyahu, who declared that the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is a move to change “the balance of power in the region for years to come,” will see this as furthering that goal.
Mordechai Kedar, who focused on Syrian issues during the 25 years of the Israeli military intelligence service, said that the events in Syria were caused by the attacks of Hamas on October 7 in Israel. “It’s not just Israel — it’s the whole Middle East that’s going to celebrate,” he told CNN.
A man holds up a Syrian protest flag in a Druze village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, on December 8, 2024, as men celebrate the fall of the Assad regime. – Stoyan Nenov/Reuters
The fall of the Assad regime is “a huge blow” to Iran, said Amos Yadlin, a former officer in the Israel Defense Forces, who also served as head of the Military Intelligence Directorate.
“The rebels are tearing the papers of (Iranian general Qasem) Soleimani and Nasrallah from the Iranian embassy in Damascus which shows the severity of the axis strike,” he said. “Rebuilding Hezbollah seems even more difficult with the loss of Syria, which was a safe haven for weapons from Assad, Iran, and Russia.”
On the other hand, no one really knows – including in Israel – who the rebels are now ruling Syria, and how they will exercise their power.
The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former affiliate of Al Qaeda. The American government still has about 10 million dollars on its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, whose real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Kedar said that although their roots are big, the opening signs were good. “So far, they’re smart,” he said. “For example, they are leaving the government to run the country.”
Mr. Jolani urged the revolutionary forces to leave the government institutions unscathed. “For all the forces in the city of Damascus, it is absolutely forbidden to go to public institutions, which will remain under the former Prime Minister until he is officially handed over, and it is also forbidden to shoot bullets in the air,” he wrote on Telegram.
“Here, they are learning from the American mistakes in Iraq. They don’t want to destroy the country. They want the system to work – of course under different laws and different leadership. This is a reasonable way to run the country.”
Yadlin said Jolani “showed political skill and won Syria without a fight.”
“In the short term, the rebels are not a threat to Israel,” he said. “If he has to establish his regime in Syria, he will not join forces with the most powerful forces in the region. Israel must shape the rules of the game against Syria in the same aggressive way it does in Lebanon. “
That view is not shared by everyone. Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chiklisaid, said in a statement that “the most important thing is that the majority of Syria is now ruled by organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Daesh.” He called on the Israeli army to establish full control within the buffer zone that since 1974 existed between the area controlled by Israel and Syria.
Indeed, Israel’s most important priority is to secure its border with Syria. The IDF said the deployment of troops inside the Golan buffer zone was done “to ensure the security of the Golan Heights communities and Israeli citizens.”
Shapira said he doubted that Israel would want to anger the new leaders in Damascus by pushing into the Syrian-controlled Golan. “Taking more space means we have to deal with other players who may not be happy about it,” he added.
“There are a lot of different forces,” said Shapira. “It will be difficult for Israel.”
The Israeli army, in its statement about the operation in the Golan, said: “The State of Israel does not intervene in the conflict in Syria.”
Israel’s top leaders and political leaders have been mum on the events in Syria – no doubt, as they monitor the process.
The opposition leader Yair Lapid said that the ousting of Assad emphasized the need to “form a strong regional alliance with Saudi Arabia and the countries of the Abraham Accords (Bahrain, UAE, Morocco, Sudan) in order to solve together the instability of the region. The Iranian axis has weakened significantly, and Israel must try to be successful in politics will also help it in Gaza and the West Bank.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman and Mike Schwartz in Jerusalem contributed this report.
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