Rescuers walk inside the heavily damaged Syrian Army and Defence Ministry headquarters complex in Damascus, following Israeli strikes. Photo / Bakr ALkasem, AFP
Rescuers walk inside the heavily damaged Syrian Army and Defence Ministry headquarters complex in Damascus, following Israeli strikes. Photo / Bakr ALkasem, AFP
Analysis by Paul Nuki
No sooner does one war stop in the Middle East than another starts.
Israel appeared to open a new front today, turning on the new Syrian regime and striking the Ministry of Defence building in Damascus.
Israeli fighter jets also bombed Syrian government forces in the south, where sectarianviolence has erupted between the Druze minority and Bedouin tribes.
Why is Israel attacking Syria?
Israel claims it acted to protect the Druze, a minority religious group with long-established ties to Israel.
The Druze took several Bedouin hostage in revenge and fighting between the two communities broke out in the town of Suwayda near the Israeli border, leaving more than 100 dead.
The new Syrian regime sent in troops, supposedly to keep the peace, but some of those forces killed Druze civilians in the process and humiliated others by shaving their moustaches.
Israel responded by bombing Syrian positions and killing some of their soldiers and civilians.
More than 300 people have been killed since fighting broke out on Sunday (Monday NZT), according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Some 69 Druze fighters were killed as well as 40 civilians, 27 of them in “summary executions … by members of the defence and interior ministries”, the war monitor said.
In addition, 165 Syrian troops had been killed together with 18 Bedouin fighters.
The Israeli strikes targeting the Syrian Army and Defence Ministry headquarters in Damascus killed one person and wounded another 18, it added.
Who are the Druze and why are some of them aligned with Israel?
Their religion evolved as a form of Shia Islam but they do not count themselves as Muslims.
Many of them fought with Israel against the Arab armies in the 1948 war which founded Israel. They remain over-represented in the ranks of the Israel Defence Forces today as soldiers.
There are about 145,000 Druze living within Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and they comprise about 1.6% of Israel’s population. They also have large communities in Lebanon and Syria.
How does Israel see al-Sharaa and the new Syrian regime?
When the group moved to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria in 2024, Israel took the opportunity to bomb and destroy the vast bulk of the country’s military assets including tanks, trucks, missiles and weapons.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria in the presidential palace in Damascus, on April 9. The fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has opened a window for wealthy Gulf countries to expand their influence in Syria as the sway of Iran diminishes. Photo / Daniel Berehulak, the New York Times
This has left al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda fighter-turned-statesman, struggling to exert policing control over large parts of the country.
Immediately after al-Sharaa won power, Israel lobbied hard to keep them branded as terrorists but was caught by surprise by United States President Donald Trump befriending the new leader and welcoming him to the international fold at the behest of both the Saudis and the Turks.
Some believe Israel has been looking for an excuse to upset that apple cart ever since it got rolling on the US President’s visit to the Gulf about two months ago.
Today, two ministers of the Israeli Government called on the IDF to “eliminate” al-Sharaa.
“We must not stand idly by in the face of the Islamist-Nazi terror regime of al-Qaeda in a suit and tie,” said Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for the diaspora and anti-Semitism.
“Anyone who thinks Ahmed al-Sharaa is a legitimate leader is gravely mistaken — he is a terrorist, a barbaric murderer who should be eliminated without delay.”
Why is Israel so worried about al-Sharaa and Syria?
There are several reasons.
Although the new regime is not aligned with Iran, it does have an Islamist heritage and Israel has been plagued by Islamist terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah for decades now.
It is also relevant that al-Sharaa’s nom de guerre is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the “Jolani” element of which has long been associated with the Golan Heights, the disputed area of southern Syria and northern Israel that Israel formerly annexed much of in 1981.
There are populist fears in Israel that any former al-Qaeda fighter who comes from that region and carries the name is unlikely to leave it alone forever.
This is one of the reasons Israeli forces have seized a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched air strikes on military sites in Syria.
The geopolitics of a renewed and powerful Syria may also not suit Israel from a military or political perspective.
The new regime there is close to Turkey, a fierce critic of Israel, and to Saudi Arabia which, along with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have become major powers in the region.
A successful Syria could be expected to align itself closely with these emerging blocks, providing economic opportunities for Israel but also real military, economic, and political competition.
Some analysts believe, therefore, that Israel would prefer Syria to remain fragmented.
What’s likely to happen next?
Much will depend on Trump and the US who are said to be angry about Israel opening a new front in Syria.
The US, on which Israel is reliant for air defences and weapons, has the muscle to force an end to the fighting and has said previously it wants to give al-Sharaa and Syria a “a chance to succeed”.
But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, has proved himself adept at running rings around the US President who is said by John Bolton, his former national security adviser, only to remember what the last person who spoke to him said.
