Israel takes advantage of the chaos in Syria to attack military assets

After launching hundreds of airstrikes against Syrian military assets and seizing positions, including a mountaintop with an uninterrupted view of the capital Damascus, Israel appears to be seizing what it sees as a unique moment of opportunity.

Syrian command structures were in disarray, with key positions apparently left unmanned after the fall of the Assad regime.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says its air force and navy have carried out more than 350 strikes since Saturday night, destroying approximately 70 to 80 percent of Syrian strategic military assets from Damascus. to Latakia.

They included fighter jets, radar and air defense sites, and warships, as well as weapons arsenals, the Israeli military said.

“The navy operated last night to destroy the Syrian fleet with great success,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said.

The IDF has also moved ground forces east from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to a demilitarized buffer zone in Syria and, it now admits, slightly beyond.

Katz said he had ordered the military “to establish a sterile defense zone, free of weapons and terrorist threats in southern Syria, without a permanent Israeli presence.”

One Israeli commentator said the last 72 hours “stood out even for people who thought they had seen it all.”

“It did not just strip the Syrian army of specific capabilities: it sent it back to the starting line, bereft of significant strategic capabilities,” Yoav Limor wrote in the Israel Hayom newspaper.

“The IDF operation to destroy Syria’s military capabilities is the largest they have ever undertaken,” Udi Etzion commented on the Walla news site.

Former Israeli Air Force officers commented in online posts that some of the attacks carried out as part of this operation were based on plans laid out years ago.

A military analyst said some targets had already been identified by Israel in the mid-1970s.

Meanwhile, troops have taken control of positions in the Golan, including the summit of Mount Hermon, according to Israeli media. In Arabic, the mountain is known as Jabal al-Sheikh.

“The territory guarantees strategic control over all of southern Syria, creating an immediate threat to Israel,” the Ynet news website quoted Kobi Michael, a researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), as saying. “There is no higher point of view than the Syrian part of the Golan.”

Officials stress that Israel has been acting in its own national security interests following the collapse of the Assad regime.

They say the goal is to prevent weapons the regime owned from falling into the wrong hands, whether Syrian extremist factions or its old enemy, the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Hezbollah and its sponsor, Iran, were close allies of Assad, helping him stay in office during Syria’s long civil war.

“We will not allow an extreme Islamic terrorist entity to act against Israel beyond its borders, putting its citizens at risk,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video message on Tuesday.

Syria and Israel fought each other in the Middle East wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973 and are formally considered enemy states.

Under Bashar al-Assad, Syria was a major regional military power. Israel had attacked it in recent years with hundreds of attacks that were rarely openly acknowledged. Israel’s calculation included a sphere of denial for itself but also for Assad so that he would not feel compelled to respond.

These had focused on preventing the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, as the main transport route was by land from Syria to Lebanon, weapons manufacturing and Syrian air defense systems, which posed a threat to fighter jets. Israelis sent on missions.

Israel avoided major attacks that could have led to a broader war and sought to avoid conflict with Russia, after becoming Assad’s biggest supporter in recent years.

Some defense analysts suggest that Israel wanted to avoid weakening the Syrian regime for fear of unleashing the chaos that could follow if its opponents took power. Over the years, Israel and Syria – under their secular Baathist regime – stuck to well-defined red lines; He was a known adversary.

But the rapid advance of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) prompted a hastily developed new Israeli strategy.

UN peacekeepers remain in the buffer zone established in Syrian territory after the 1973 Mideast War and have emphasized that by moving its ground forces there, Israel is violating the ceasefire agreement that established it.

Israeli officials maintain that the ceasefire agreement has now collapsed, as the other party to the agreement ceased to exist, and that its measures are temporary and limited to self-defense.

A UN peacekeepers spokesman said peacekeepers “could not move freely within the buffer zone after recent events”, adding that it was “imperative that UN peacekeepers can carry out their assigned tasks without obstacles”.

“We are against this type of attack. I think this is a turning point for Syria. Its neighbors should not use it to invade Syrian territory,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq and the Arab League have issued official statements, with several of them presenting it as a land grab taking advantage of recent events and a violation of Syria’s sovereignty and international law.

France and Germany have also criticized Israeli actions, with France demanding that Israel withdraw troops from the buffer zone and Germany warning Israel, along with Turkey in northern Syria, not to jeopardize chances for a peaceful transition in Syria. .

“We must not allow the Syrian internal dialogue process to be torpedoed from outside,” said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

The United States has urged Israel to ensure that its incursion is “temporary.”

However, among Israelis there has been broad public support for the country’s preventive actions.

Several media outlets highlight the potential danger posed by the new Islamist leaders in Syria, where HTS is still considered a terrorist organization.

Writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Amihai Attali congratulated Israel’s military and political institutions, saying they had learned a valuable lesson from the deadly Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, which caught the country off guard.

“One of the most important lessons of the invasion, massacre and mass kidnappings is that we cannot afford the privilege of trying to interpret the enemy’s intentions,” he wrote.

“We can’t afford to make mistakes on that front. We have no margin for error for that.”