Assad’s fall has rewards for Israel. It’s focused on the risks.
| Tel Aviv, Israel
Within hours of Syrian rebels seizing Damascus last weekend, Israeli soldiers crossed into a demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries. Israel described the move as defensive and temporary, necessary to keep at bay the potential chaos and attendant threats inside Syria.
From a strategic perspective, the crumbling of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” – including a weakened Hezbollah and the fall of the Tehran-backed Assad regime in Damascus – is a victory for Israel. But it also creates a host of security problems. In a powerful indication it is taking no chances, Israel launched hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syrian military equipment and installations this week.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onFor Israel, like others, the Assad regime’s fall creates challenges. Invoking its security, Israel moved quickly to seize border positions and smash Syrian military equipment. But can it translate its strategic advantage into diplomatic achievements?
In the meantime, not everyone is convinced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t already overreaching in Syria to win domestic political points. Others say there are opportunities for even greater achievements.
Jeremy Issacharoff, a former Foreign Ministry official, suggests Israel could strengthen its anti-Iranian alliance if it addresses Palestinian aspirations.
“It could start talking about a pathway towards a two-state solution with the Saudis that could also include the Syrians as well,” he says. “I don’t want to be overly optimistic – these are not simple things – but it would be irresponsible to exclude it.”
For 50 years, the Israel-Syria border on the Golan Heights was the quietest in the Middle East. But within hours of Syrian rebel forces seizing Damascus without a fight last weekend, Israeli soldiers crossed into a demilitarized zone in Syria designed as a buffer between the two countries.
Israel described the seizure of some key positions on the Golan’s rocky plateau and near the peak of snowcapped Mount Hermon as a defensive and temporary move, necessary to keep at bay the potential chaos and attendant threats inside Syria.
The action also has the proactive markings of a government and army still reeling from the colossal failure to protect its people from the Hamas massacre and mass hostage taking 14 months ago.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onFor Israel, like others, the Assad regime’s fall creates challenges. Invoking its security, Israel moved quickly to seize border positions and smash Syrian military equipment. But can it translate its strategic advantage into diplomatic achievements?
Yet in an even more powerful indication it is taking no chances, Israel launched hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syrian military equipment and installations this week. The goal: to minimize any threat from the replacement in Damascus of the “devil it knew,” Bashar al-Assad, with an untested coalition of rebels led by a faction with jihadist roots.
Among the targets not just hit, but entirely destroyed, according to Israel: the Syrian navy and sea-to-sea missiles with a range as far as 120 miles. Of most immediate concern, however, have been stockpiles of and production facilities for chemical weapons, which Mr. Assad had used against his own people and which Israel fears could fall into “the wrong hands.”
Following the dramatic weakening of the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah in a punishing Israeli offensive this fall, what does the sudden collapse of the Iran-allied Assad regime mean for Israel?
A victory with challenges
From a strategic and historical perspective, the crumbling of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” – its collection of proxy armies – is a victory. But it also creates a host of Israeli security problems, not least of which is Syria’s likely instability for the foreseeable future.
“The worst-case scenario in Syria is that it could become the Somalia of the Middle East,” Nitzan Nuriel, a retired brigadier general and counterterrorism expert, told journalists in a briefing.
“From the Israeli perspective, based on what happened in countries from Libya to Afghanistan, we know when regimes collapse, terror groups can take over and take advantage of weapons systems and platforms and use them against neighboring states and others,” he said. “So as a preemptive step, we decided to destroy everything those unexpected rivals might use in the future.”
With Iran considerably weakened, the biggest question for Israel now surrounds the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, argues Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank.
“Tehran could theoretically enrich uranium to a military-grade level of 90 percent ‘as early as tomorrow’ and attempt to build a nuclear facility within a few months,” he wrote in the Maariv daily newspaper. Yet, he cautioned, “Such a move without Hezbollah’s protective umbrella, combined with Israel’s demonstrated capability to strike in Iran, and the presence of President Trump in the White House, could pose a direct threat to the regime in Tehran.”
This new reality “changes the rules of the game,” he added, and “significantly weakens Iran’s influence in the Middle East for at least the coming years.”
The buffer zone
Still, analysts say, it will be important for Israel to thwart any Iranian attempts to regain a foothold in Syria, which for years served as Tehran’s main corridor for transporting weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Also recommended: to build bridges with the country’s moderate Sunni rebels and Druze communities.
In the meantime, not everyone in Israel is convinced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government isn’t already making mistakes by engaging in tactical overreach in a bid to win domestic political points.
“When it comes to sending troops to the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, what military purpose does it serve apart from showing everyone we are there and we are strong?” says Eyal Zisser, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University and an expert on Syria. “Are we protected better if we are about a mile or two deeper into Syria? I doubt that very much.”
Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Haaretz, a left-wing Israeli newspaper, noted Wednesday that on a tour of the Golan Heights the previous day, Mr. Netanyahu had declared the collapse of the 1974 postwar agreement that set up the Syrian buffer zone and had been honored ever since.
“If the agreement has collapsed, Israel is no longer bound by the map that accompanies it; it can change the border according to its security needs,” Mr. Benn wrote. “For most of his years in power, Netanyahu was considered risk-averse, someone who avoided wars and embraced the status quo. The current war [with Hamas and Iran’s proxies] has changed him.”
Jeremy Issacharoff, former vice director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, argues that while Israel has a duty to protect its border, it also has one to respect such a valuable agreement, one that has served as a critically stabilizing force and kept the border peaceful.
“To take over the Syrian side of the Golan Heights is an important cautionary step,” he says, “but it’s important to say it is a temporary measure, not meant to disrupt but rather preserve the agreement.”
This, he argues, would be a central achievement for Israel, as it waits to see how things play out inside Syria – specifically, whether the leadership that emerges is moderate or extreme.
Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, whose Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham faction is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and others, has presented himself as pragmatist who wants to focus on rehabilitating Syria, not on seeking out new wars to fight.
Is there opportunity?
In 2013, during the Syrian civil war, the Israeli army launched “Operation Good Neighbor” – its answer to concerns that Islamist militants among the Syrian rebels might use the border area to launch attacks.
To encourage villages and towns to keep such forces away, and to help civilians fleeing toward the border, Israel provided humanitarian assistance in the form of food, gasoline, and medical supplies, and then began treating wounded Syrians in Israeli hospitals.
The hope was also long-term, that this kind of personal outreach would one day pay dividends.
“This is how Syrians found out that Israel is not Satan. Ties were made between people,” says Yehuda Blanga, a Syria expert who lectures in Bar Ilan University’s Middle East studies department. “I’d suggest the government try to connect now to the same people who once needed our help.”
In 13 years of civil war, which Mr. Assad sought to brutally crush – bombing civilians in opposition-held cities and torturing detainees – more than half a million people were killed and millions displaced.
Syria “could go the way of becoming an ISIS meshuggeneh state,” says Ambassador Issacharoff, using the Yiddish word for crazy, “but I have a feeling it’s too much of an opportunity for the Syrian people” to miss out on rebuilding and rehabilitating themselves.
Israel could in turn strengthen and expand its regional anti-Iranian alliance, he suggests, if it addresses Palestinian aspirations.
“It could start talking about a pathway towards a two-state solution with the Saudis that could also include the Syrians as well, and maybe Lebanon, too,” he says. “I don’t want to be overly optimistic – these are not simple things – but it would be irresponsible to exclude it.
“American involvement can help fashion a much broader opportunity if you have a Saudi or Syrian opportunity on the table,” he says. “If you want to make the deal of the century, this could be it.”
