Eurasia Press & News
Analysis: Israel has waged a campaign of destabilisation and destruction in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime.
Since Bashar Al-Assad’s regime fell on 8 December 2024, Israel has waged a campaign of destabilisation and destruction in Syria.
While flagrantly violating international law and disregarding Syria’s sovereignty, Israel has been recklessly bombing the country and illegally seizing more Syrian land by force.
Immediately after Assad’s ouster, the Israeli air force and navy started carrying out hundreds of strikes, which took out the remainder of the fallen regime’s military.
While many Syrians across the country were celebrating Assad’s fall, Tel Aviv not only kept its control of the occupied Golan Heights, but Israeli ground forces quickly usurped control of more land in southwestern Syria, creating a “buffer zone”. Israel maintains that this is all necessary to protect its national security.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded the demilitarisation of southern Syria and warned that the new Syrian government’s forces must stay outside of this part of Syria, while Defence Minister Israel Katz has vowed to keep his country’s occupying forces in Syria for an indefinite period of time. In late February, Katz declared that Israel “will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon”.
Many observers see Israel’s conduct in post-regime change Syria as more about a push to thwart stability, reconstruction, and redevelopment in the war-ravaged country, rather than anything related to legitimate security concerns.
“From Syria’s perspective, this looks less like defence and more like irredentism at a moment of national vulnerability, and it’s hard to argue otherwise,” Yusuf Can, an analyst at the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, told The New Arab.
Ultimately, what Israel seeks above all else is to ensure that Syria, regardless of who rules the country, will never be a strong state. In light of regional developments last year, including the severe weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Assad’s fall in Syria, Israel seeks to create new facts on the ground in the Levant.
Under this Israeli-imposed order, no state or non-state actor would be in a position to challenge Israel’s military dominance or force Tel Aviv into paying a price for its genocidal conduct in Gaza, expansion of its colonial enterprise in the West Bank, or unhinged belligerence in Lebanon.
“Israel has consistently moved to destabilise Syria with repeated strikes and calls to demilitarise the southern region of Syria. Israel would prefer a weak, unstable neighbour who will not threaten counterstrikes or a counteroffensive beyond the border,” explained Caroline Rose, a director at the New Lines Institute, in an interview with TNA.
“What Israel is trying to achieve is basically sending the government in Damascus clear signals that ‘We are enemies, and we would like for that relationship to continue as such.’ I believe that this actually serves Israel’s interests,” Karam Shaar, the director of Karam Shaar Advisory Limited and a non-resident senior fellow at the New Lines Institute, told TNA.
“What is better than having a very weak and fragmented country where they can have a lot of negative rhetoric against you, but they can’t really harm you? They don’t have the capacity to harm you. That’s the perfect enemy and all politicians need an enemy – obviously a weak enemy. This helps the Israelis seek support from the US. It helps them seek support from the EU by portraying themselves as the victim,” he added.
Countering Turkey in Syria
The possibility of Turkey and post-Assad Syria forming a military alliance threatens Israel’s vision for Syria and, by extension, the rest of the Levant. Put simply, Israeli planners worry that Ankara could play a role in protecting Syria from Tel Aviv’s aggression, perhaps to the point of deterring Israel from waging future attacks.
Within this context, a key Israeli objective behind their bombardments and land theft in Syria is to prevent Turkey from establishing a military footprint in the war-ravaged country.
Israeli officials have been accusing Ankara of seeking to make Syria its “protectorate” while expressing serious concerns about the implications of deepening Turkish influence in Syria. In recent weeks, Israel has been waging strikes destroying military infrastructure in Syria, which can be understood as Tel Aviv’s way of denying Turkey the opportunity to establish a military foothold in Syria.
Strategically located west of Palmyra in central Syria, the T4 Airbase, which the ousted regime used for many years, links Damascus and Homs. Israel has been determined to decimate much of this base with recent airstrikes. Tel Aviv has also carried out military operations against Syrian defence infrastructure elsewhere, including in Damascus and Hama. In practice, Israel’s destruction of this military infrastructure serves to undermine Ankara’s abilities to transfer drones, heavy logistics equipment, and air defence systems to these parts of Syria.
In response to these airstrikes, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan criticised Israel for fuelling instability in the region by “both causing chaos and feeding terrorism”. He went as far as calling Israel the gravest threat to security in the Middle East.
“Israel has sought to make Turkey think twice about establishing permanent and/or semi-permanent military installations in Syria and deepening its defence ties with the interim government. After the reports that Turkey was setting up air defence systems at the T4 base, Israel subsequently conducted strikes on the T4 base, with Netanyahu claiming there was a limited window to strike to prevent targeting Turkish military assets,” said Rose.
Yet, Fidan stressed that Turkey is not interested in a confrontation with the Israelis and that Syria’s interim government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa could establish its own policies in relation to Israel.
Interestingly, Azerbaijan, which maintains extremely close relations with Turkey and Israel, hosted talks between the two countries on 9 April aimed at de-escalating the friction between Ankara and Tel Aviv vis-à-vis post-regime change Syria. According to Netanyahu’s office, “each side presented its interests in the region, and agreed to continue the path of dialogue in order to maintain security stability”.
The Israeli delegation in Azerbaijan reportedly communicated that Tel Aviv’s red line would be a Turkish base in the Palmyra area. One Israeli official said thwarting such Turkish activity “is the responsibility of the government in Damascus. Any activity that endangers Israel will threaten the rule of al-Sharaa”.
Like Azerbaijan, the US is a close ally of both Turkey and Israel, giving Washington vested interests in Ankara and Tel Aviv cooling their tensions in Syria. Two days before the Turkish and Israeli delegations met in Azerbaijan, President Donald J. Trump addressed Turkey’s role in post-Assad Syria while Netanyahu was next to him in the Oval Office.
Lauding his “great relations” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump described the Turkish president as a “tough” and “smart” leader who “did something that nobody was able to do”. That was a reference to Turkey being, at least in Trump’s eyes, the country which orchestrated the Assad regime’s ouster late last year.
Trump went on to tell Netanyahu, “Bibi, if you have a problem with Turkey, I really think you’re going to be able to work it out. You know, I have a very, very good relationship with Turkey and with their leader, and I think we’ll be able to work it out. So, I hope that’s not going to be a problem. I don’t think it will be a problem”.
Although the White House is aligning extremely closely with Israel on the Gaza war, the question of Turkey’s role in post-Assad Syria could prove to be a source of tension between Trump 2.0 and Netanyahu. In contrast to the Israeli thinking, which views Ankara’s agenda in Syria as a grave threat to Israel’s interests, Trump appears to have a positive attitude regarding Turkey’s role in the country.
At least for now, despite Washington and Baku’s efforts to see friction decrease between Ankara and Tel Aviv, such Syria-related tensions in Turkish-Israeli relations do not appear on the verge of resolving. In fact, shortly after the two delegations met in Azerbaijan, Erdogan addressed the Antalya Diplomacy Forum and declared that “Turkey will not allow Syria to be dragged into a new vortex of instability” while also accusing Israel of seeking to undermine the “revolution” that overthrew Assad late last year.
Looking ahead, the dynamics resulting from this Turkish-Israeli power struggle vis-à-vis Syria will likely do much to shape the war-torn country’s fragile transition and position in the region’s geopolitical order.
“After 2011, Syria’s weak and collapsing state made it a battleground for countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia. Now, under new circumstances, the country has turned into an area of competition between Turkey and Israel,” Dr Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told TNA.
“In the process, neither side wants an outright conflict, nor do they want to antagonise the United States. Israeli military attacks in Syria are meant to increase the logistical costs [of] stationing Turkish troops in the country and ensuring that the facilities are rendered unusable for any future military purposes,” he added.
Keeping Iran weak in Syria and engaging the Druze
Despite the extent to which Assad’s fall led to a drastic decline in, if not total elimination of, Iranian influence in Syria, Israel’s foreign policy toward Syria remains heavily focused on Iran. Ensuring that Syria is never again a country that serves as an arms conduit for Hezbollah, nor a country that provides the Tehran-backed Lebanese group with any strategic depth, is a high priority for Israeli policymakers.
“Even though the new Sunni government in Damascus is no fan of Tehran, Israel isn’t taking chances. It’s been striking suspected Iranian-linked assets and remnants of the old Hezbollah pipeline. From Tel Aviv’s perspective, Syria can’t be allowed to return to being a weapons corridor or strategic foothold for Iran,” Can told TNA.
Tel Aviv is determined to establish a buffer in Syria that can protect Israel from any group deemed hostile, whether Iran-linked groups or Turkish-backed forces tied to the new Syrian government. This brings us to Israel’s outreach to the Druze, which is part of Tel Aviv’s quest to “anchor that buffer,” noted Can.
“Long-term, Israel wants more than tactical success. It’s trying to shape post-war Syria into a state that recognises Israel’s security red lines, ideally, even its hold on the Golan. By seizing ground now, it’s betting it can bargain later: give up parts of the buffer in exchange for guarantees, maybe even recognition,” he told TNA.
Yet, as much as Israel appears to be currently achieving some success in Syria, there are some risks Tel Aviv takes. By seizing more Syrian land and bombarding parts of the country while attempting to shore up Israel’s links with the Syrian Druze minority, some experts warn that such an approach stands a chance of blowback.
“So far, [Israel’s quest to shape post-Assad Syria] seems to be working. Israel controls southern Syria, Iran has been pushed out, Turkey is moving cautiously, and Damascus can’t push back. But there’s a catch. Holding that territory long-term is risky. Already, some Druze groups are uneasy with Israeli control, and clashes have broken out. The same strategy that secures the border today could backfire if it alienates local allies or unites Syrians. International pressure could also grow. Russia still has troops in Syria and may not tolerate a permanent Israeli presence,” Can told TNA.
Regardless of how such dynamics play out, it is clear that Israel sees its regional interests advanced by deepening Syria’s ethnic and religious divides in order to dim the prospects for a strong and unified Syrian state emerging out of Assad’s fall. If the Druze factions in Suweida end up with an autonomous zone, this development could possibly set a precedent that leads to other minority communities stepping up their own demands for autonomy.
This approach to Syria, in which Tel Aviv seeks the Arab country’s fragmentation, is deeply rooted in Israel’s history. The “minorities alliance” doctrine of Israeli foreign policy, in which Tel Aviv has engaged with minority communities in Arab countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, and Sudan, goes back many decades.
Normalisation
There is a desire on Washington’s part to see Syria and Israel normalise. Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has made this clear. If Syria’s new government were to enter the Abraham Accords, that would need to be understood within the context of the country’s weaknesses and Damascus’s desire to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the US and other Western powers.
The lifting of US and European sanctions appears to be a top priority for Sharaa and those in his inner circle. This requires improving the image of the HTS-dominated Syrian government in Washington and European capitals. Therefore, it is not necessarily unthinkable that such western and Israeli pressure will push Damascus into accepting a normalisation of some form with Tel Aviv.
“The new Syrian leadership has shown a clear unwillingness, or inability, to voice much concern over Israeli attacks in the country or its pilfering of Syrian military equipment. It appears that, for now at least, Damascus is more interested in consolidating political power than defending the country’s national interests. If this is indeed the case, with sufficient economic and diplomatic incentives from Washington, we may indeed see a normalisation of relations between Syria and Israel,” Dr Kamrava told TNA.
Nonetheless, there would be high costs for Sharaa’s government to pay if Damascus accepts normalisation with Israel.
According to Shaar, if Israel were keen on striking a peace deal with Damascus, Sharaa would be “very reluctant” to agree to one. This is because the Syrian president “knows the backlash against such a peace accord – unless Syria gets…the entirety of the [Israeli-occupied] land [in Syria], which I don’t think Israel will offer – that would put Ahmed Sharaa in a very difficult…[and] untenable position”.
Israel’s aggression against post-Assad Syria has “shut down any real chance of normalisation with Damascus, at least in the short term,” said Can, who holds that continued Israeli occupation of Syrian land takes Syrian-Israeli peace talks “off the table” despite Sharaa expressing a “general openness” to normalisation with Tel Aviv.
“The Golan Heights remains the central obstacle. As Sharaa put it in February, the issue is simply too politically ‘sensitive’ to even broach while Syrian territory is still under Israeli control. And Israel hasn’t just held the Golan, it’s expanded further,” he told TNA.
“Every missile that hits Syrian soil reinforces public anger and makes normalisation politically suicidal for Damascus. No Syrian leader, especially one trying to consolidate post-war legitimacy, can talk peace while Israeli jets are bombing the country. Bottom line: normalisation isn’t happening [any time] soon,” concluded Can.
“As of April 2025, the path forward looks more like a standoff than a peace process.”
