By Michael Karadjis

Today, November 27, marks one year since the sudden Syrian rebel offensive landed them in control of Aleppo in 3 days, and in Damascus in 10 days, with the complete collapse like a house of cards of the 54-year hereditary monarchy of the Assad family. Everywhere they marched, the hated tyranny collapsed; no Syrian soldier considered it worth risking their lives for. Thousands of people gathered everywhere they arrived, stunned at the very idea that that the totalitarian nightmare that had caged their lives for as long as they had known had suddenly vanished into history. (I wrote this around a year ago).

The prison doors were flung open everywhere, especially Sednaya, the empire of evil, the capital of the Assad family’s Torture & Disappearance Inc. Thousands were released, even more stunned that their torturer was suddenly gone and they could breathe the air of freedom, could walk out and curse without being killed or jailed again. Many had lost their minds, did not know their names. Many had been there for decades. A 57 year old man saw the light, jailed at 17 for no particular reason at all, as far as he remembered, a student from Lebanon. The pilot who had been ordered to bomb the rebellious city of Hama in 1982 and refused, jailed for this heroic disobedience, saw the light of day after 42 years. A Palestinian man of about 60, who had tried to shake the hand of Ahmad Jibril, a ‘Palestinian’ traitor who headed the misnamed ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command’ (not to be confused with the actual PFLP), an organ of Baathist regime intelligence – but did so from his seat rather than standing up – had likewise been thrown into Sednaya for this slight 39 years earlier – and was now released. Some 600 Palestinians were also released, including 67 Hamas cadre, but 1300 Palestinians had been tortured to death in captivity, including 94 Hamas cadre, on top of some 7000 ‘disappeared’.

But the release of mere thousands – perhaps 25,000 – was a huge disappointment. Because at least 130,000 were known to have disappeared. The releases left over 100,000 unaccounted for – ‘disappeared’ by the regime, after it finished torturing them, into mass graves scattered around the country. The since updated database of the Syrian Network for Human Rights now puts the figure at 177,057 people forcibly disappeared. To be clear, this is on top of the 600-700,000 killed in the regime’s counterrevolutionary war itself, during which it destroyed entire cities and entire chunks of the country, in many places leaving no homes standing at all, a Gaza-like moonscape over much of Syria.

Why November 27? Addressing false discourses

To step back, why November 27? The name of the offensive – ‘Operation Deterring Aggression’ – demonstrates how little clue the rebels had when they began that the regime would collapse in 10 days. They thought they were, literally, deterring the regime’s aggression. A shaky ceasefire between the regime and the last remaining pockets run by anti-regime militia in the north, especially in Idlib, had been signed in 2020, under Russian-Turkish-Iranian auspices. But from the time that Israel began its genocide in Gaza after October 7, 2023, the regime and Russian airforce turned in the opposite direction and began attacking and bombing Idlib. The rebels therefore began planning an offensive to “deter” this regime “aggression.” However, there was a problem. Throughout these years, the fascist regime had been backed not only by Russia, but also by Iran, Iran-backed Shiite militia from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and by Hezbollah. At this moment, however, Hezbollah was taking a break from killing Syrians, and had returned to its original resistance credentials by firing across the northern Israeli border in solidarity with Gaza.

Now, the Syrian people, including the rebels, hated Hezbollah. If you can’t understand that, you probably need to do a little more research and expand your horizons beyond binary thinking. If Hezbollah had been dragged kicking and screaming into Syria by its Iranian masters and simply held up the rear, that would have been one thing. Instead, they took a lead role in a number of IDF-style regime starvation sieges around Damascus, during which hundreds actually starved to death, and these entire Sunni towns were uprooted and the people expelled to the north. So just let that sink in. But right then, Hezbollah was preoccupied with Israel. But, despite the inconceivably inaccurate popular understanding of this, this was precisely a problem for the rebels, not an “opportunity.” Because much as they hated Hezbollah (and Iran), they also hated Israel. The entire October 7 2023 to December 27, 2024 period, the rebels in Idlib and northern Aleppo organised rallies, seminars, fund-raisers in support of Gaza – the only part of Syria where this happened. One campaign raised $350,000 for Gaza, a remarkable achievement for a poor rural province under Assadist siege; April 2024 saw the opening of ‘Gaza Square’ in Idlib. Meanwhile, the Assad regime banned rallies in support of Gaza or Palestine, and in contrast to other alleged “axis of resistance” components, did not lift a finger on the Golan, even symbolically, to support Gaza, but also did not even lift a finger to support Hezbollah, in its existential hour of need (and neither did Iran btw), in fact the regime closed Hezbollah recruitment offices – despite all the honour Hezbollah had lost saving his regimes arse – and even engaged in intelligence cooperation with Israel against its erstwhile Iranian “allies” who Israel was bombing inside Syria!

Therefore, the rebels waited until November 27 because that was the day the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was signed, in which Hezbollah agreed to move north of the Litani River, away from the Israeli border. They did not move to deter the aggression against themselves until they could be sure they were not helping Israel in doing so. Despite the sensational ignorance and privilege of much of the western ‘left’ who think the rebels moved at that point to help Israel, surely a little common sense would tell them that if this were the aim, they would have moved during the height of Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, not wait till it was over. Countless thousands of Iran-backed militia were still in Syria, who could have tried to save Assad if they had chosen to. They did not fire a shot, and on December 6 made an agreement with HTS to facilitate their total and peaceful exit from Syria (I have discussed these issues here).   

Israel’s one full year of aggression beginning on December 8

From the morning of December 8, when the Assad regime collapsed and Assad and other criminals fled to Russia (while some of the criminals fled to the UAE or Iraq), Israel began its biggest air war to date, weeks of bombing and destroying Syria’s entire military arsenal, all the advanced weaponry that Israel never touched as long as it was under the control of its preferred Assad regime. Israeli leaders from Netanyahu down claimed the new Syrian government was a “terrorist organisation that has taken over a state,” the IDF occupied a swathe of territory in southern Syria beyond the already occupied Golan Heights (Israel and Assad had both respected the 1974 UN disengagement lines for 50 years, which left Israel in control of the Golan but without Syrian or global recognition), and Israel has continued to launch air attacks of varying intensity, and less visible ground attacks in Quneitra and Daraa – seizing farmland, raiding houses, arresting civilians and taking them to Israel, taking control of water supplies etc etc – ever since; there has been no let-up, only less media (I wrote about this Israeli aggression here).

Just one example of the ongoing, daily nature of Israeli aggression: on November 28, as if to demonstrate their hostility to the Syrian revolution anniversary, Israeli troops and tanks raided the town of Beit Jinn, southwest of Damascus, attempting to seize a number of residents – as they regularly do. When locals resisted, six occupation troops were allegedly wounded, so the invaders brought in the airforce and attacked the village with shells, drones and artillery, killing thirteen Syrians. The Israeli military claimed “armed terrorists” fired on their troops, who responded “along with aerial assistance” and “a number of terrorists were eliminated” – as elsewhere, Israel believes it is its occupation forces who have the right to “self-defence” against locals resisting their invasion. Israel claimed they to be arresting cadre from Jama’a Islamiya, a Lebanese Sunni Islamist group which fought with Hezbollah against Israel, but also supported the anti-Assad revolution in Syria, but Israel regularly makes claims it produces no evidence for. The Syrian foreign ministry vigorously condemned the “full-fledged war crime” and “horrific massacre” carried out by the occupation army, claiming this “is a systematic policy by the Israeli occupation to destabilize the situation in Syria and impose an aggressive reality by force.”

Meanwhile, Russia still has its air and naval bases on the coast, the US still has a (reduced) military presence in the northeast, and Turkish forces are still present in parts of the north.

Assessing one year of post-Assad Syria

How can we assess one year of post-Assad Syria? That of course is a question beyond the scope of this mere ‘anniversary’ essay. I wrote a detailed sum-up of the first six months in domestic post-Assad Syria policy here; though that was before the Suweida massacre in July, which I thus wrote about here. The first article did cover the coastal massacre in March, however, but I also wrote a much more detailed report on that here. I’m about to release a thorough report on the foreign relations of the new Syria the next few days.

There are a number of points we need to consider together.

First, the new government inherited ruins. The World Bank estimates the minimum cost of reconstruction to be 215 billion $US; many estimates are several times that amount. Millions of homes, thousands of schools, hospitals, markets, every kind of basic facility, need rebuilding; two and a half million children are now out of school. Syria is the fourth most food-insecure nation on Earth. There is no real economy; there are few jobs. The job of the Assad regime was to destroy its country, and as long as Russia and Iran were willing to keep pouring in money and guns to keep their favoured mafiosi in power, it didn’t matter. Fourteen million people – 60 percent of Syrians – were uprooted, half internally displaced within Syria, and the other half, nearly 7 million people, as refugees abroad, the world’s largest refugee population. Perhaps 2 million internally displaced and one million refugees have returned. For many, returning to no home, no job, no money, no economy, and little security, is not on their agenda right now, for these obvious reasons. Therefore, the job of a new government inheriting the ruins created by a previous one is to reconstruct the country and get the economy moving – that is its primary brief, and its actions must be seen through that primary lens.

Second, this desperately poor and destroyed country is under permanent Israeli aggression and occupation, and US sanctions which had been imposed on the previous regime yet, absurdly, continued after that regime vanished. There is no global socialist fund to help countries reconstruct – most reconstruction funds will come from foreign investment, aid and loans, with all the strings attached. But as long as sanctions continue, and the threat of ‘snap-back’ exists when they are merely ‘suspended’, very little reconstruction money will enter Syria. From December to May, the US took a somewhat hostile stance, and then approached Syria with a list of draconian ‘conditions’ for mere sanctions ‘relief’. Trump’s sharp turnaround in May – during his Gulf extravaganza, at the behest of his Saudi and Qatari hosts and the Erdogan regime in Turkey, who all want to invest and make money in Syria – when he declared that “all” sanctions would be lifted “immediately” – thus appeared a big victory over this edifice of humiliating “conditions” being erected by the White House, State Department and National Security Council. In doing so, Trump went against not only many of the MAGA Islamophobes and “anti-terrorism” tsars, but also against Israel, which had appealed to Trump to not lift sanctions. This resulted in some announcements of some large investment projects, especially in crucial energy infrastructure, from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France and China. However, the reality is that Trump’s statement had little meaning – the sanctions may still be lifted by the end of the year (with snap-back provisions) but to date they still exist and hold up any real recovery (I wrote about the sanctions lifting issue here).

Meanwhile, as long as Israel continues with its unprovoked war of aggression and occupation in the south, this is all the more reason for investors to not invest – who wants to invest in a war zone? And this is partially Israel’s very goal – Israel openly says it wants to keep Syria poor, weak, divided, it wants Syria’s current serious divisions widened, for the country to break apart, and for the government to collapse.

Third, because Assad had already meticulously destroyed every other Syrian rebel force, had crushed the civil uprising, destroyed entire cities where hundreds of revolutionary councils had ruled in the early years of the revolution, expelled entire populations from the south to the north, expelled millions from the country, it so happened that the only significant rebel force left standing, partly due to Turkish protection, but also due to Assad’s focus on crushing democratic revolution, was the Islamist militia HTS, then ruling over Idlib in the northwest. Some other rebel groups also ruled other parts of the north, but they were even more co-opted by the Turkish government; HTS, with all its faults, was at least independent. HTS had attacked and crushed many other rebel forces over the years, and had assassinated some prominent revolutionary leaders. For most Syrian revolutionaries in the spirit of 2011, it was the last quasi-rebel force anyone wanted to come out on top. But given Assad’s crushing of everyone else, the Assad regime’s complete collapse allowing HTS-led forces to walk in, and a degree of transformation of HTS itself (it remained a rightwing Islamist group, but those ‘leftists’ calling it “al-Qaeda terrorists” are best described as the ‘Neocon left’), history simply brought this about.

But what does that mean? The government, to state an obvious truism, is a capitalist government; no-one was expecting socialist revolution. Its economic orientation is neoliberal; in fact, given the money in the hands of former Assad cronies, some of these have already been partially rehabilitated in the economic field; meanwhile, large numbers of workers have been retrenched from the public sector. And while HTS dissolved in January, the most important government ministries are led by former HTS members. However, the circle has broadened considerably beyond the former HTS since then. The cabinet of 23 only has four ex-HTS members, and another 5 with some association with it; includes mostly technocrats; but there is only one woman, one Christian (the same as the one woman, who however was a prominent democratic activist), one Alawite, one Druze and one Kurd, its attempt at ‘diversity’ thus looking highly tokenistic. It is not a government I would be supporting, but it is not about me; one way or another, it appears to have the strong support, at present, of the majority of the Syrian population, or at least of the majority, Sunni Arab, population; it has legitimacy.

The government has promised democratic elections in several years, once the conditions are more suitable (at present elections would exclude millions uprooted and in exile, there has been no census etc); in the meantime, it held a kind of farcical semi-election which did, however, involve a degree of popular input, for a transitional peoples assembly – this did further widen the governing body, but still the number of women and minorities ‘selected’ was far lower than the government’s own projections. Of 119 ‘elected’, only 6 were women, and 17 minorities (4 Alawites, 4 Kurds, 4 Turkmen, 3 Ismailis & 2 Christians). No Druze were selected because Suweida is temporarily outside Syrian government control, and likewise the ‘election’ did not take place in Raqqa or Hasakeh under SDF control, thus excluding most Kurds, but seats have been left vacant for these three governates; but all three seats in Afrin were won by Kurds. On the other hand, it is notable that no seat was won any former HTS cadre. One aspect widely considered the most negative about the process is that another third of seats are to be directly chosen by the president, giving Sharaa a huge amount of power; however, one expectation is that the president’s choices should be aimed at fixing up any imbalances. Whether Sharaa appoints significant numbers of women and minorities is therefore an important test, and if he does, it will be a somewhat ironic outcome from a democratic perspective.

The other side of the equation is that the post-Assad polity contains a democratic space that the Syrian people have never experienced before. This is the major gain of the revolution, the major contrast to the past; this is what must be preserved, against attempts by domestic and foreign enemies, or the government itself, to crack down on these democratic rights; and this is what must be greatly expanded. Sednaya and the entire edifice of Assad’s torture gulag are gone; they have not re-opened. People can demonstrate, hold rallies and meetings, criticise the government, without fear of persecution, let alone fear of being gunned down by guns and tanks, bombed by barrel bombs and chemical weapons, or jailed, tortured and disappeared. Women have demonstrated against government ministers suggesting outrageous things; far from forcing women to cover up as was warned of, even the only woman in the Syrian cabinet does not wear hair covering. There have been workers’ strikes, but without real jobs, without reconstruction, without a revival of industry, there can be no working-class movement with any strength – and when we speak of ‘neoliberalsm’, essentially this means capitalism today – it is only through workers’ rights to organise that this can be confronted, not through illusions in ‘better’ government policy if another party were running the country.

Sectarian divisions in new Syria: inheritance of Assad regime’s genocidal sectarian war

Both of these truisms – ‘capitalist government’ and ‘democratic space’ – must be set in the context of what has already been stressed – that of a destroyed country. But it is not only the physical destruction. The Assad regime destroyed Syria’s social fabric to a sensational extent, something not commonly understood. The two rounds of sectarian massacres – of Alawites in March and Druze in July – are such a stain on post-Assad Syria that it would be easy here to simply say that the new regime is just a Sunni Islamist version of the Alawite-dominated Assad regime. Following the murder of hundreds of Alawite and Druze civilians, even if these two communities hated the Assad regime (the Druze rose against the regime, while even many Alawites hated a regime which spoke in their name but robbed them daily while killing off their young men as cannon fodder), they would now see their lives as worse in the new situation. Indeed, much as I am against all foreign intervention in Syria, I would frankly not be opposed to some temporary UN protective role on both the coast and in Suweida, as these people are essentially victims of the consequences of the Assad regime.

However, just because it would be ‘easy’ to make such a simplistic statement – that the Sharaa government is just a Sunni Islamist version of the Assad regime – does not make it correct. We still need to reckon with the fact that for the vast majority of Syrians, the situation is infinitely better. Can the Druze now blame themselves for being in the forefront of the overthrow of Assad? Can the Alawites now blame themselves for standing aside as the regime collapsed and welcoming the rebels? If HTS had planned a sectarian massacre, would we not have seen signs of it then? In reality, one of the aspects of the revolution that was so positive was precisely the lack of sectarian ‘revenge’ and the clear and open calls by the new leadership to avoid it. The regime collapsed because it was rotten to the core; nothing could have saved it.

But the inheritance of the Assad regime’s counterrevolutionary sectarian war was a country deeply divided. Hundreds of Alawites were killed by Sunni sectarians in March; hundreds of Druze were killed by Sunni sectarians in July; tens of thousands of Sunni civilians were slaughtered in sectarian massacres by Assad’s fascistic ‘Shabia’ thugs throughout Syria in 2012, 2013 and 2014 in particular in countless large and small sectarian massacres. This cannot be overestimated, and cannot be brushed aside as Assad using repression against “everyone against him.” He did, but this was in addition to the specifically sectarian component of his war. I wrote in detail about Assad’s regime being “the incubator of sectarian mayhem” in one section of my large article on the coastal massacre. In addition, the towns and parts of cities destroyed were Sunni; the millions of homes destroyed were Sunni; the starvation sieges were against Sunni towns; most of the displaced internally and externally are Sunni; the 2 million living in tents in the north are Sunni. It is not “sectarian” to tell the truth, to analyse (it IS sectarian for elements of the current government or its supporters to exploit this to make everything about “Sunni victimhood” in order to justify their own sectarianism – but the point is this DOES have a basis in reality).   

All of this had consequences. When the Assad regime vanished, and its leading thugs ran chicken to Moscow or Abu Dhabi, the regime armed forces and security forces collapsed; it could no more continue existing than the Nazi death squads in 1945. While both the Druze and the Kurds had their own armed forces (which allowed the Druze to beat back government-backed militia in July), independent of both the Assad regime but also of the main rebel groups, the Alawites had only had Assad’s armed forces – every other sign of independent Alawite life had been crushed by the Assad regime. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of the rebel armed forces by then de facto consisted of Sunni – yes some occasional Christians or even other smaller minorities also, but overwhelmingly Sunni. The ‘new army’ patched together in January through the dissolution of the rebel militia was thus a de facto Sunni armed force. New internal security forces (the GSS) were set up, largely from people associated with the Idlib statelet. Negotiations with the Druze (until July) and the Kurds and SDF/AANES (ongoing) to integrate their armed forces into the new army will hopefully yield results, but have not yet.

But the Alawite question festered. The Alawites who lost their jobs in army, police and security forces had no work; and there had been little time – or apparent intention by the new authorities – to begin integrating them into the new armed and security forces. Meanwhile, these Alawites (and Sunni members of Assad’s forces) passed through ‘resettlement’ centres to settle their status, to prove their innocence – but though ‘resettled’, they could still find no work. But meanwhile, thousands of Sunni Syrians, uprooted, returning to destroyed or occupied homes, could likewise find no work, because none existed. And while former Alawite soldiers were rightly ‘resettled’, these Sunni and other victims of the Assad regime received no justice because, despite arrests, not a single butcher, torturer, criminal from the old regime has yet been put on trial; lack of transitional justice allows irrational resentments to fester.

It is notable that the US sanctions – in denying the beginnings of economic recovery and reconstruction – played a role in both the drift of some of the cut-loose Alawite population towards the growing Assadist insurgency, and of the phenomenon of armed, rootless sectarian Sunni rabble – no jobs, no income, no hope, no justice, allows the sectarian inheritance of the former regime to fester on all sides. Some observers, such as Syrian activist Joseph Daher, argue that the new regime is weaponising Sunni sectarianism to build its power base in much the same way that the Assad regime was dominated by the Alawite minority; others emphasise the inability of the young government to effectively control the Sunni dominated armed forces and still less armed sectarian Sunni elements among the population; I believe the jury is still out in this question and the answer is far from simple.

Sectarian massacres of Alawites and Druze: Sections of the population lost by the people’s revolution

Into this explosive mix came the murderous March 6 uprising of former Assadist officers who had been hiding out, with tons of weapons, in the coastal mountains. They ambushed the new security forces – mostly new, young men just recruited – and murdered hundreds of them, alongside some 200 Sunni civilians, and seized government buildings throughout the coast. The government sent in more security forces, and the new army, to crush the coup – as was its responsibility. Thousands more troops and armed civilians also poured in at that chaotic moment, horrified at the prospect of the genocidal regime returning and at the hide of them even showing their faces so soon, and to avenge the murdered new, young security officers, while some mosques and social media sites pumped out sectarian hate. While most may have stuck to script, hundreds did not, and instead invaded Alawite villages and small towns and took irrational ‘revenge’ by slaughering the Alawite citizenry, destroying and looting. In Baniyas – scene of a horrific Assadist massacre of some 500 Sunni civilians back in 2013 – armed civilians from the countryside, relatives of those prior victims relatives of those prior victims – carried out the most appalling, savage massacre of the entire event, one of the more direct ‘boomerang’ events. Several Turkish-backed ‘Syrian National Army’ groups were regularly named as the most responsible for the massacres, as well as armed civilians. The new internal security forces, most directly under government control, were regularly cited as the most professional, attempting at times to help civilians escape, and focused on the actual insurgents. Calling these events a “government massacre” is lazy nonsense. UNHCR, Syrian government, Syrian Network for Human Rights and other bodies carried out investigations revealing some 1400 civilians were slaughtered.

The Syrian government condemned the massacre, got all the unauthorised forces out of the region within two days, and set up an investigation, which named 298 people on the pro-government side, including military and police, and 265 Assadist insurgents, to be investigated for war crimes. Just last week, the first 7 of each side were put on trial. This is a good sign. I do not have to have many illusions to say that such a thing never took place under Assad. This is progress. But without a radical change in government policy – not only the trials and punishment proving effective, but also compensation, real reconciliation and justice, and above all inclusion of the Alawite population in the political and especially security architecture of the new state, this component of the population is effectively lost.

While the slaughter ended, killings and kidnappings of Alawites has continued to be a major factor in the lives of the civilian population, although some killings are clearly targeted at former Assadist thugs who have not faced justice. There is both an undeniably sectarian element to this, but also a broader element connected to the post-revolutionary state of insecurity, which most leftists, particularly those who have studied history, need to admit is the norm; when you “smash the state” it takes time to rebuild from scratch and many civilians end up the victims of this state of insecurity. But the connection between the sectarian and purely insecure elements is precisely the reluctance, or extreme slowness, in today’s Sunni-led Syrian polity to incorporate significant numbers of Alawites into the security and military forces in the regions they live in, an essential step.

Even then, this state of insecurity should not be exaggerated for Syria today: for example, in the fact that in the week November 25 to December 2, of 41 violent deaths across Syria, a full third of them (13 deaths) were the result of Israel’s attack on Beit Jinn, another 22 percent (9 deaths) the result of unexploded ordinance (UXO), a gigantic problem in Syria today that is barely mentioned by anyone, and another 12 percent (5 deaths) caused by ISIS, highlights the fact that random killings have actually been in sharp decline for months – in the circumstances, something of an achievement.

One important point here is that while the March massacres mostly took place in the Alawite-dominated coastal governates of Tartous and Latakia (since that is where the Assadist insurgency took place), today these regions are relatively calm by overall Syrian standards. For example, in the fortnight October 28-November 11, Tartous and Latakia experienced the least violence of anywhere in Syria, including only one killing – that of an Alawite murdered by an Assadist-Alawite armed faction for working with the authorities! In contrast, Homs, despite being largely spared in March due to swift action by Syrian security forces to protect the Alawite population, remains stubbornly the worst region in Syria for this low-level, individual sectarian violence, reflecting the extreme sectarian tensions in a region where Alawites are a minority, but where, under Assad, the Sunni population was massacred and uprooted mercilessly.

While the government needs to do much more to incorporate the Alawites and stem the violence, the situation is not helped by the ongoing low-level Assadist insurgency which, while lacking popular support among Alawites who saw themselves left to the slaughter in March by the reckless insurgents, continues to kill security forces and sometimes civilians, perpetuating the sectarian atmosphere. Worse, one Alawite who stood in the October semi-elections, Haydar Younes, was labelled a ‘traitor’ and murdered by the insurgents; the Alawite candidate who won a seat in Baniyas (against 10 Sunni candidates) has allegedly fled the country due to threats from these quarters. On the other hand, a series of peaceful demonstrations by the Alawite community in late November showed that Alawites could raise their demands politically in new Syria, despite the odds, and point towards a better direction for Syria.

In some ways it is worse with the Druze massacre in July, because it was not precipitated by a murderous Assadist uprising, and in fact the Druze had mostly been anti-Assad and had begun the uprising against the old regime from 2023 onwards, and also because one might expect the government to have learned from the experience of March. I don’t have space to go into the same amount of detail here (read my article), but in short, the government’s responsibility for the Suweida massacre was greater than for the coastal massacre – not that I think it planned a massacre here either, but the attempt to use intervention into the Druze-Bedouin clashes as a means to militarily ‘solve’ the ongoing negotiation over the degree of autonomy and decentralisation for the region – by essentially taking the side of the Bedouin rather than separating the forces as announced – had consequences that should have been predictable. While Israel’s large-scale aggression to “protect the Druze” – including bombing the Syrian Defence Ministry building and national palace grounds – was self-serving and hypocritical, and the tendency of some Druze groups and leaders to raise the Israeli flag appalling, it is also to be expected when subjected to such savage, existential slaughter. While members of government military and security forces have been detained for future trials following the government’s investigation, it is too early to judge whether this will deliver impartial justice, and once again, as with the Alawites, given the sheer scale of the slaughter, without a radical change in governmental policy, this component of Syrians – previous to that a relatively pro-government one – is also lost.

One difference between the coastal and Suweida massacres was that since the Druze still had their armed militia, they were able to give government-backed forces a bloody nose; while figures of 1500-2000 are estimated to have been killed in the crisis, up to one third of these deaths were government-backed troops and security forces, along with Druze militia, Bedouin civilians (an often overlooked group) and Druze civilians (the vast majority of deaths). This means that Suweida is now effectively outside Syrian government control; it has its ‘autonomy’, but lives in limbo. While the UN and other aid agencies continually bring in supplies, private trade with the rest of Syria is almost impossible due to the state of insecurity between Suweida and Damascus, which the government seems either powerless to fix, or uninterested in fixing, making the situation effectively an undeclared siege.

The Druze political-religious leadership under Hikmat al-Hijri has taken a very hard line towards the Syrian state; it has set up its own ‘National Guard’ as a kind of para-state and rules out negotiating with current Syrian authorities. Al-Hijri took a hard line against the government throughout the year, buoyed by Israeli statements of support which he willingly responded to. However, blaming a ‘Hijri-Israel conspiracy’ for the crisis misses the point that the majority of the Druze leadership had taken a relatively pro-government and anti-Israel position and had continually disagreed with Hijri’s maximalism; but the massacre left mud on their faces and from then on all daylight between their position and Hijri’s vanished, except for some small groups who lack popular support. However, after months in limbo new voices have appeared calling for a different position out of pure pragmatism; Hijri however has demonstrated his own authoritarianism, with sweeping arrests of Druze oppositionists in early December followed by news that two of them, prominent clerics, Raed al-Mutni and Maher Falhout, had been tortured and killed in detention.

Demonstrations calling for ‘independence’ or even annexation by Israel have no reality: Suweida’s population is around half a million, the region agricultural; independence would leave Druze communities elsewhere in Syria a smaller minority with no ‘centre’, while also leaving Suweida’s banished Bedouin population permanently outside; it has no border with Israel, and Israel frankly prefers Suweida in its current state of limbo as a dagger cutting into the heart of Syria serving its interests rather than the messiness of another illegal annexation, notwithstanding the fantasies of elements of the Israeli right about a ‘David Corridor linking the Israeli-occupied Golan to the Kurdish-led AANES statelet via Suweida, and from AANES to Iraqi Kurdistan.

Despite the effective Sunni domination of the new Syrian polity, the situation for other minorities is rather different to that of these two geographically-concentrated minorities. The Christian ten percent of the population has tended, despite challenges, to closely collaborate with the new authorities, who have also gone out of their way to work with their leaders; the small Ismaeli population has found its niche in new Syria, often as interlocutor between Sunni and Alawite communities; while even the small Shiite population has tended to be supportive of the new government, and aware of how cynically they were used by Assad and his allies in the past, though their situation varies throughout Syria. In between, we have the situation of the Kurds: like Alawites and Druze, their geographic definition gives their position a higher priority to the government, but their leaders have strongly oriented towards forming some kind of partnership with the post-Assad authorities.

We can only hope that the negotiations to integrate the Syrian Kurds, and the AANES statelet and SDF armed forces (not the same thing as ‘the Kurds’), into the Syrian state proceeds smoothly. For various reasons, the US has more invested in this process, given its 9-year alliance with the SDF against ISIS. Turkey tends to pressure the Syrian government to adopt a military ‘solution’; Israel prefers permanent separation and rupture. In between the two extremes of these two mutually-hostile US allies, the US position ends up a somewhat better one by default. While there are significant differences between the government and AANES/SDF, there has also been progress in bridging these differences. The SDF wanted to integrate into the Syrian army “as a bloc,” while the government wanted its troops to integrate “as individuals.” The deal is a compromise: some new army corp will be set up in the northeast, and so the SDF cadre will join them as large groupings local to that region; some AANES leaders will have ministries and some SDF leaders, like Mazlum Abdi, will get a high position in the Defence Ministry. Meanwhile, Sharaa has said that the local government law protects ‘decentralisation’ at the level of the AANES councils. We’ll see. Everyone knows that any military ‘solution’ here can only bring enormous catastrophe. Incidentally, while there are divisions on both sides regarding the approach to integration, PKK leader Ocalan has weighed in to express strong support to the SDF/AANES integrating into new Syria.

Meanwhile, while much left and progressive opinion tends to favour the Kurdish and SDF/AANES position – understandably given a number of very progressive aspects of policy, in particular being far in advance of current or previous governments regarding the role of women in society – it should be noted that they do themselves no favours with actions such as attempting to close Assyrian Christian schools (since rescinded), for teaching the government rather than the AANES curriculum, issuing a circular banning celebrations of the anniversary if the revolution, and statements earlier in the year opposing the lifting of sanctions (a position seemingly changed) and reaching out to Israel. A key problem with the issue is that much of the 30 percent of Syria that AANES/SDF rules over is not Kurdish, and in particular, much of the the Arab population in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor sees its future with the Syrian government; moreover, Deir Ezzor is where most of Syria’s oil is located, AANES thus holding a key Syrian resource. Arguably, a more flexible SDF policy may have been to more actively compromise on regions known to be chaffing under their rule (and indeed not doing so could end up having negative consequences for the SDF). But that goes for the government as well, for example, the refusal to budge on dropping the word ‘Arab’ from the country’s name, despite the opposition Syrian Coalition having agreed to do so as along ago as 2015.

Syria and the world: An oppressed, devastated country under foreign occupation and aggression

It is in the context of all of the above that the new Syria’s approach to the outside world must be seen. While it is appropriate that much of the domestic policy of the new government be heavily criticised (while also acknowledging great progress in many areas), as it is the government and, with al its limitations, does have power, when it comes to foreign policy, the framework must be different: whatever valid critiques can obviously be made, the framework is of a desperately impoverished, utterly destroyed country under one year of Israeli aggression and occupation, and still under US sanctions preventing recovery and reconstruction.

I will state this: I have found the level of white privilege among much of the western left on the issue of Syria’s foreign policy to be quite extraordinary.

Rather than express solidarity with Syria against Israel’s occupation and aggression, the privileged left condemns Syria for not “resisting.” Knowing full well that Israel destroyed Syria’s entire military arsenal in the first weeks. Knowing full well that any armed “resistance” at this stage would simply give Israel even more excuses to claim its occupation troops need the right to “self-defence” against the “terrorist jihadist” regime (Israel uses the same terms as some of the privileged left), and level Damascus. It is OK for you, but try to remember that much of Syria has already been levelled Gaza-style by Assad, Russia and Iran – it does not need more just at the moment, thanks.   

Indeed, as noted above, when the people of Beit Jinn just did resist by merely injuring six of the invading occupation troops, the IDF responded with the airforce and killed 13 civilians. That is Israel’s model, as is well-known. Imagine that on a larger scale. Of course, as this incident shows, resistance will eventually grow because it cannot forever be held back against a brutal occupier, and when it happens they deserve our full support. But this is up to the Syrians themselves to determine when, how and how much, it is not up to computer-based, tyrant-worshipping, hypocritical western tankies. Given its enormous task of rebuilding a destroyed country, the government’s attempts to avoid this escalation through diplomatic means, especially through US government channels, is entirely sensible; Israel’s aim is precisely to provoke a military response so that it can openly continue Assad’s destruction of Syria.

Rather than express solidarity with Syria against Israel’s occupation and aggression, the privileged left proclaims, ignorantly (and usually wanting to stay ignorant) that Syria is trying to “make an agreement with Israel,” or even more ignorantly, that it is interested in signing the “Abraham Accords” with Israel, or that it is willing to give up the Golan Heights to Israel.

Trump’s ‘security agreement’ with Israel charade

Here are the facts:

The ‘security agreement’ that Trump wants (which, to be clear, has nothing to do with ‘normalisation’), is wanted neither by Syria nor Israel, but both go along with the discourse to try to get out of what they can from the US government, which ultimately has the power in the situation:

The Syrian government has endlessly issued the same message since December 8, 2024 when Israel ripped up the 1974 disengagement accord that Assad had stuck with for 50 years: that Israel must return to where its occupation forces were before that day. That is the only ‘security agreement’ Sharaa is willing to sign, ie, the exact same ‘security agreement’ that Assad signed in 1974 and stuck with forever after. If you cannot criticise Assad for never once attempting to go beyond the 1974 lines to liberate Golan in 50 years, with enormous armed forces, you can hardly criticise the new government for not gunning to do so in one year after Israel destroyed its military arsenal.

For Israel, on the other hand, if it is to sign any ‘security agreement’ with Syria, it has listed its demands: that it keep some of the extra territory stolen since December, especially Mount Hermon, that the UN buffer zone be extended some kilometres into free Syrian territory, that the entire south of Syria – Quneitra, Daraa and Suweida governates – be ‘demilitarised’ for Syrian military and air force, but that Israel control this airspace and be allowed to fly its own warplanes around at will to prevent “threats,” and that Syria cede the Golan. Syria rejects all of this out of hand.

Come on, privileged left – how about, good on you Syria for sticking to your guns?

The mainstream media circus does not help, of course. How ironic that we read phrases along the lines that Syria has been engaged in US-mediated negotiations with Israel “despite” Israel continually attacking Syria – that should be “because,” not “despite.” Countries under brutal aggression and occupation almost always have to negotiate with the aggressor; try thinking of any examples when that doesn’t happen. The privileged left condemns Syria for negotiating with its brutal occupier, while not condemning Hamas for negotiating, not condemning the Vietnamese for negotiating with the Americans – but on the other hand, demanding that Ukraine not only negotiate with the Russian imperialist aggressor and occupier, but also that it fully concede to Russia’s demands! Try making heads and tails out of this swill.

What is Trump’s position? Trump wants to be able to say he “ended another war” or some rubbish. But, despite his clownish friendly demeanour with Sharaa, lauding his “attractiveness” and so on, and his bending to the Gulf-Turkish position on Syria sanctions against the Israeli position, one thing is clear: ever since his first meeting with Sharaa in May, the US government has not once condemned Israel’s ongoing aggression against Syria. Trump’s flattery of Sharaa (mirroring what he likes to get) appears to be one of his means to achieve Israeli objectives, the good cop/bad cop show; though he may force Israel to concede just a little too, this is mostly about getting Syria to capitulate, to become a vassal. Moreover, only recently, Trump has yet again boasted about being the leader who recognised Syria’s occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory. Syria is well aware of this duplicity.

Syrian government: No to normalisation with Israel, entire Golan must be returned

On the Golan itself, the privileged left proclaims, ignorantly, that the new Syrian government is willing to give up the Golan for “peace” with Israel. Yet the Syrian government has continually stated that it absolutely rejects conceding the Golan, continually stressing it is Syrian and must be returned and here in the UN, that its occupation by Israel enjoys no “Arab, regional or international legitimacy,” and again in Sharaa’s interview with Petreaus, and by Syria’s UN ambassador at an October Security Council session. When Trump, in a joint press conference with Netanyahu, boasted that he had “recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” Syria’s Foreign Ministry responded by reminding the world of UN Security Council Resolution 497 (1981) which declared the Israeli annexation “null and void.” The sheer wealth of such statements seems far more active than the Assad regime ever was on this question.

Rather than express solidarity with Syria against Israel’s occupation and aggression, the privileged left accepts and broadcasts, ignorantly, the media-driven discourse that the new Syrian government is open to signing the Abraham Accords and normalising with Israel, even though the government has not made a single statement that it wants to do so; second-hand hearsay is constantly contradicted by government leaders rejecting normalisation and the Abraham Accords, such as in Sharaa’s discussion with David Petraeus in New York, or here a few days earlier, or in this interview with Al Majallah in August, or here back in April, or in this interview with Shaibani, and in Sharaa’s interview with Fox during his  November US visit and so on.

There is no basis for normalisation in any case, because Israel has declared Syrian agreement to cede the Golan a condition for any ‘normalisation’ with Syria, and Syria rejects that as a non-starter. But actually, the Golan gives Syria cover for rejecting ‘normalisation’ which it does not want in any case. In contrast to Assad’s explicit statement that Syria “can establish normal relations” if Israel returned the Golan (aiming to follow his Egyptian and UAE friends), that this has been his government’s position since negotiations began in the 1990s, the Sharaa government only speaks in the negative, that no discussion of normalisation is possible without the return of the Golan, that Syria’s foremost condition for any “peace process” to begin is a “complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights”, that “Damascus will not consider any diplomatic initiative that falls short of restoring Syrian sovereignty over all occupied territory, including the entirety of the Golan Heights”; though in his interview with Petraeus, Sharaa also noted Syrian and global “anger” at Israel’s actions in Gaza as a further reason that normalisation is not on the cards. Unlike Assad, this wording makes no promise to normalise even if the Golan were returned; these are guarded statements to keep the US engaged. 

I wrote about these issues here.

None of this means that partial surrender at some stage is impossible – when you’ve got a gun at your head you may be forced to make concessions, as has happened throughout history. As Dalia Ismail writes in Al-Jumhuriya:

“Yet this outcome [the prospect of forced ‘normalisation] is not freely chosen, but emerges from an impossible bind: either accept normalization, with Israel continuing to occupy Syrian territory, or face the ongoing threat of airstrikes, instability, and potential future invasions … what appears as diplomacy is in fact the formalization of coercion.”

Very good – but the important thing is that Syria has not capitulated.

Syrian foreign policy: ‘Balance’, no hegemony, no ‘blocs’

Sharaa’s US visit in November was full of contradictions. On the one hand, there was none of the public pomp, Sharaa entering the White House through a side door, to a meeting with no media; on the other hand, once over, sickening displays of Sharaa and that slug Trump almost slobbering over each other, giving gifts and the like, which was hard to watch. But aside from the show, and our feelings of disgust, what is this really about? Quite simply, alone in the world, only the US government holds two keys: that of ending its crippling sanctions, and that of at least somewhat restraining Israel. There is nothing more important to Syria. The two other issues discussed were Syria formally joining the 90-country alliance to combat ISIS – given that this war takes place on Syrian territory, it is probably a good thing, though the current Syrian government has fought ISIS from the outset anyway (as did HTS and all rebel groups for the last decade); and the ongoing integration negotiations with the SDF.

Does this mean Syria wants to join a “US-led axis” or any such thing, as many have charged? Let’s look at the timeline. Before meeting Trump in May, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov visited Damascus to meet president Sharaa and the foreign ministry in January, a few days later Putin had a phone call with Sharaa; after Israel’s stepped up aggression in July, foreign minister Shaibani visited Putin and Lavrov in Moscow, in September, a Russian delegation from 14 ministries visited Damascus and met a large Syrian delegation, in early October, a delegation of senior Russian military officials visited Damascus, to discuss Syria’s military hardware needs, then Sharaa visited Moscow and met Putin on October 15, and around the same time Shaibani announced an upcoming visit to Beijing in “early November.” Note – this is Russia, the state that ruthlessly bombed Syria for a decade on behalf of Assad, who it gives asylum to! So much for US axis! In fact, others are calling Sharaa a Russian asset!    

It was in these circumstances that Trump made his sudden invite on November 10, upstaging Shaibani’s Beijing visit. But within days of Sharaa’s US visit ending, Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra welcomed a large Russian military delegation, led by Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, for talks in Damascus; on November 17, a convoy of about 30 vehicles carrying Syrian and Russian military officials made a field tour of Quneitra, visiting towns “where Israeli forces penetrate on an almost daily basis,” to assess possible Russian deployment in the region. And this took place on the same day that Shaibani was in Beijing, being feted by the Chinese foreign ministry and other top officials, who declared their support for Syrian recovery of the Golan, for Syrian participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, while Shaibani promised that no foreign fighters (ie Uyghurs) in Syria would be allowed to use Syrian territory to threaten Chinese interests, declared Syria’s support for the ‘One-China Policy’, and unfortunately, even made it explicit that this included Taiwan! Yes, Syria knows its reconstruction requires China’s economic might on board! 

Condemn the Syrian government for often going completely overboard in its concessions, as long as you recognise that this is just as likely with Russian and Chinese interests as with American. Was it necessary to throw Taiwan under the bus so specifically? No, it was not. And we can think of many other occasions when the Syrian government went beyond the necessary, to the unnecessary, and damaging. And I would certainly like to imagine that a more revolutionary-democratic or socialist-oriented government would try to avoid such pitfalls, be more cognizant of the appeal to the world’s peoples rather than just the world’s ruling classes. Well and good. But this is what we have at the moment, and we must realise that even if we avoided all these excesses, the pressure would still be on any government to do a great deal the same.

Actually, Syria’s policy of refusal to be in any (imaginary) ‘axis’ or ‘bloc’ has been very explicit in countless statements by Sharaa and Shaibani. One sign is that it has used the term ‘strategic partnership’ with the US, Russiaand China alike. In a September interview with Sharaa in Al-Ikhbariya, after discussing growing relations with Russia, the interviewer notes Syria’s relations with the US and asks, “Where does Syria stand?” Sharaa responded that Syria had built good relations with the US, the West and Russia, and with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and other countries, showing that Syria “bring(s) together the global contradictions,” due to “the strength of the event that happened” (ie, the overthrow of Assad). This “led to a balance in relations,” Syria “standing at an equal distance from everyone.”

Syria and Palestine

Finally, what about Palestine? I have already noted above the year of solidarity with Palestine in Idlib (I wrote about it here), but once Syria came under massive Israeli attack in December and January, the government initially went quiet, which was disappointing to say the least, though worth remembering that it was this government that freed hundreds of Palestinians, civilians and fighters, jailed by the Assad regime (those who survived Assad’s death dungeons). Sharaa returned to form in February, when asked in an interview about Trump’s plan to expel the whole population of Gaza, he called this a “very serious crime” and lauded the “80-year” Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing (note: 80-year, not 60-year), even taking aim at Trump’s planned expulsion of Mexicans from the USA as an analogy! Then in March at the Arab League Summit, Sharaa’s speech vigorously condemned Israel’s crimes in Gaza, West Bank and east Jerusalem, stressed Syria’s support for Palestinians struggle, including, crucially, for “return,” and stated that Syria would always stand by Palestine. And at the emergency OIC meeting in August, Shaibani condemned the “silence of global conscience” as Israel’s war crimes continue in defiance of international law and the UN Charter, by “bombing homes, hospitals and schools” which Syria condemns “morally, humanely and historically.” Finally, while most of Sharaa’s 10-minute UN speech naturally focused on his own country’s dire needs and Israel’s aggression against Syria, the only other issue in the world he gave the last part of his speech to was solidarity with Gaza.

Does this mean Syria will do anything to aid Gaza or Palestine? For the present, no, and it knows it cannot, which is also why its stance, while firm and principled, is not overblown; Syrians became allergic to Iranian-style bluster which used exaggerated “anti-Zionist” rhetoric to justify aiding in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Syria and Iraq while never doing anything of consequence in support of Palestine for decades (the “road to Jerusalem” always seemed to lead through Arab capitals like Baghdad and Damascus); they now prefer the gap between rhetoric and reality to be somewhat more smaller. Of course, we can say that Syria, under both Assad and Sharaa, shares the collective Arab betrayal of Gaza; but as a country under Israeli occupation itself, I think we can blame every other Arab country before Syria.

Why democratic gains are central to celebrate, to protect and to extend

The widely shared video at the top of this article shows Syrian security officers guarding an Alawite demonstration in Tartous. The Alawites were demanding the federalisation of Syria, and the release of Assad-era officers who have been arrested to be charged with war crimes, though other Alawite demonstrations in the region the same day were merely condemning sectarian attacks on their brethren in Homs the previous days (these attacks followed the gruesome murder of two Sunni where the killers daubed the place with anti-Sunni sectarian slogans; this was later revealed by authorities to have been a set-up). I have no interest in trying to prettify the grim situation of the Alawites, as I have made clear above. For precisely that reason, despite believing the slogans at this particular protest were incorrect, the fact that a people who feel themselves oppressed in new Syria can demonstrate and be protected by state security is such a contrast to the Assad regime – which from the beginning of 2011 (and forever beforehand) reacted to peaceful protest  with murder, incarceration, torture and disappearance – that it serves as one of the best symbols of the real difference that does exist between now and then. In addition, the fact that president Sharaa reacted by stating that the Alawite protesters had “legitimate demands” that he was “fully prepared to listen to” is also very encouraging – though of course actions speak louder than words.

I say all this without illusions, recognising that that there ARE violations of human rights and civilians’ democratic rights taking place under this government, including an occasional disappearance in an unmarked car, if on an infinitely smaller scale than under Assad; and without knowing whether or not this quasi-democratic opening will last; that is a question of struggle. But right now this picture tells an important story of what has been gained and what must not be lost, but rather radically extended. 

This is the key gain of the revolution, and the test of whether we can continue to speak of ‘the revolution’ referring to the ongoing situation very much depends on this lasting and deepening; the moment the government were to open fire on a protest would be the moment it has lost all legitimacy and ‘the revolution’ could henceforth only be defined as the struggle against the new regime (indeed, this was the lesson of the early years following the Iranian revolution of 1979 where the Khomeini regime quite rapidly turned its guns on the revolutionary people).

We need to understand this centrality of democratic rights not only because it is a self-evidently just thing in and of itself. For all those opposed to many key aspects of the current situation, the authoritarian tendencies, the sectarian dimension, the neoliberal economic policy, the limitations on women’s role and so on, it is only the intervention of the people – through the growth of trade unions, the revival of civil society, through popular struggle, that any of this can change. Real change will come from below, not from imagining a ‘better’ party in power than (the long dissolved) HTS, and this can only happen if democratic rights are protected and extended.

by Michael Karadjis

First published July 22, 2025 at https://theirantiimperialismandours.com/2025/07/22/sharaa-governments-catastrophic-debacle-in-suweida-full-druze-alienation-from-post-revolution-syria-israel-unleashed-to-step-up-ongoing-aggression/

In bombing the Syrian Defence Ministry building in Damascus, and also outside the presidential palace, along with killing 15 Syrian troops and several civilians, Israel was only escalating what it has been doing since December 8, the day the Syrian people overthrew Israel’s preferred leader.

Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes, possibly over 1000, since December 8. In the first few weeks, Israel destroyed some 90 percent of Syria’s strategic weaponry, in its largest air war ever, while occupying a significant part of southern Syria beyond the already-occupied Golan Heights, in “Syrian Golan” (Quneitra province). While airstrikes have returned with some intensity approximately monthly, in the meantime aggression takes place on the ground, away from headlines: taking over more land, destroying farmland, abducting “suspected terrorists,” attacks into Daraa and Damascus provinces, seizure of south Syria’s water sources and the like. It has not let up. Since February, Israel also banned the Syrian army from entering south of Damascus, ie, Quneitra, Daraa and Suweida provinces, with the threat of bombing.

So, while the latest aggression goes under the title of “protecting the Druze,” this background helps us understand that this is merely one of Israel’s excuses. Since the beginning, Israeli leaders like Netanyahu, foreign minister Gideon Saar, defence minister Israel Katz and others have called the new Syrian leadership “jihadists,” “terrorists,” “extremists,” “al-Qaeda” and so on. Both arch-fascist Ben-Gvir and Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amachai Chikli have now called for assassinating Sharaa; Chikli called the Syrian government an ‘Islamo-Nazi regime’ and ‘Hamas’. Arch-fascist Smotrich has stated that conflict with Syria will end only when Syria is “partitioned.” Israel has said it wants Syria split into “cantons,” and requests the US keep its forces in east Syria, and that Russia keep its air and naval bases in west Syria, as part of dividing up the land.

Now, all that said, there was of course a huge crisis in the southern Druze-dominated province of Suweida, and while for Israel it is an excuse, that does not alter the fact that real crises, and how a government handles them, can be critical in terms of the political facilitation of an aggressor. And while much can be said of the antics of some more extreme Druze leaders, or of Druze revenge attacks against Suweida’s Bedouins – all of which will be discussed below – the main story here is the hellish massacre of the Druze population in Suweida – even Israel’s outrages must be seen within the context of the events that politically facilitated its actions.

It did not need to be this way, especially given the goodwill shown to Damascus by the majority of the Druze leadership, who continually tried to reach agreement with the government on compromise plans to integrate the minority-dominated province, based on locally-controlled security arrangements, and who continually rejected Israeli “protection” and condemned Israeli attacks. But Sharaa’s apparent decision in the midst of the crisis to attempt to impose a military solution, and the resulting horrific crimes imposed on the Druze by government-led fighters – whether planned or not, whether due to state loss of control or state-led sectarian instrumentalisation – has almost certainly resulted in the complete alienation of the Druze minority (like the Alawite minority since March) from the post-Assad polity, from what the Syrian majority still see as their revolution. It also resulted in a total defeat for the government’s position, and an enhancement of both Israel’s position and that of the most pro-Israeli wing of the Druze, as the population is now more united than ever against the Sharaa government.

While there is a great deal of dust to settle, and the “fog of war” makes countless claims and counter-claims still unclear, this is my general understanding of what happened.

Background to the crisis in Suweida

The Druze in Suweida have their own sect-based military formations, which arose during the Syrian revolution; while for the most part they were anti-Assad, they were also strongly independent of the Syrian rebels; their focus was on defence of Suweida, and resisting being recruited by Assad to fight his war. Some parts of the Druze leadership and militia were more pro-rebel than others, some more pro-Assad, but always independent. In a sense, analogous to the Kurdish-led SDF in the northeast, with the difference though that the SDF included large numbers of Arabs and somewhat reflected the multi-ethnic nature of the region, whereas the Druze militia were explicitly Druze. This is not a criticism, but it is important going forward, because while Druze account for 90 percent of the population, their militia do not represent the non-Druze in the province.

Following the overthrow of Assad, the Druze militia have guarded their autonomy, rejected simply dissolving their militia into the new Syrian army, while agreeing in principle to eventual integration; as with the SDF, the question is on what terms. As with the SDF, the government rejects incorporating the Druze militia as ‘blocs’ within the army, but rather wants them to dissolve and for their members to join the army as individuals, which is theoretically what happened with all the mainstream rebel formations in January, including HTS. The problem for minority groups however is that the army and the government itself remains overwhelmingly dominated by the Sunni Arab majority, and, given the kinds of violations which have occurred (such as the large-scale massacre of Alawites in March following an Assadist coup and massacre), minorities need to feel the new Syrian polity is more inclusive than it currently is, and hence the terms of integration are important.

During clashes in late April and early May between Druze security forces and armed jihadi gangs in two outer suburbs of Damascus, Druze militia in Suweida clamoured to enter the fray to protect the Druze, but were attacked along the road north by armed Bedouin fighters. Following these events, the government reached an accord with the majority of the Druze religious and military leaderships, that the government’s public security and police would be activated in Suweida to look after internal security, but would consist only of local people. It was also suggested that a new brigade of the Syrian army could be formed at some stage for local Druze militia to join, but nothing happened due to the differences noted above. In the meantime, the Druze leadership remained opposed to the Syrian army or public security from outside deploying in the province, except to maintain security on the Suweida-Damascus highway.

In the background was a long-term low-level conflict between the Druze and the Sunni Bedouin people in the province, over trade routes, land-use and many similar ongoing issues. These are two very useful background articles.

With the Bedouin minority socially and economically marginalised, the lack of any government security forces – banned by both the Druze leaderships and by Israel for different reasons – meant they were also unrepresented in the region’s security forces, the Druze militia being for Druze. This left their region a kind of lawless no-man’s land. Meanwhile, the government abandoned its obligation to maintain security on the highway in practice.

Onset of armed clashes

Hence the background to the current disaster began with a seemingly random crime, when a Bedouin gang seized a Druze truck on the highway. In response, Druze militia kidnapped eight Bedouins as hostages, from the in the al-Maqhous quarter of Suweida city (although ‘Bedouin’ often denotes ‘nomad,’ the majority in Syria are settled), an escalatory move given that the issue was not with city Bedouin at the time. Bedouin then responded in kind. This soon led to serious clashes and killings.

After two days of clashes, amid calls for the government to do something, it sent in General Security and army units on Monday July 14, defying the ban imposed by the Druze and by Israel. What happened next is disputed. According to Druze sources, government forces took the side of the Bedouin in the clashes. SOHR reporting supports this view. According to many Syrians, as the government security forces entered to separate the sides, they were ambushed by one of the Druze militia, the Suweida Military Council (SMC), whose forces are most associated with former Assadist elements; the SMC seems to take the political of Sheikh Hikmet al-Hijri, one of the three top Druze religious leaders, who has consistently called for Israeli intervention and opposed cooperation with the Syrian government. Some 18 government troops were killed on Monday morning. A third version has it that, yes, the Druze attacked, but it was not only Hijri’s forces; rather, all Druze militia still rejected the government security presence and tried to resist their entry. A version of this is actually cited by Laith al-Bahlous, the most pro-government Druze leader, and Hijri’s main political opponent, yet he absolves Hijri’s forces of these accusations, claiming that the Syrian government told Druze leaders of its intention to enter Suweida, but they did not convey this to the people; therefore, armed Druze fighters, coming across government troops, mistakenly assumed them to be invading so they attacked them.

I don’t have a solid opinion on this, and there may have been a mixture of all these factors. But it cannot be disputed that government security forces were ambushed as they arrived, before being involved in any violence, because Druze fighters posted images of themselves standing over the bodies of the troops, and marching others away in their underwear. These images enraged Syrians, leading to demonstrations around Syria calling for revenge, which included ugly sectarian incitement against the Druze.

The conflict spread to Suweida city, between Druze fighters and Bedouins in al-Maqhous. Again, who shot first is disputed; some report it that Hijri’s militia launched an attack on the neighbourhood to subdue it, while others simply report clashes amid the mutual hostage taking. Either way, it led to Bedouin fighters from the countryside attacking the city in support of al-Maqhous, and also attacking smaller Druze towns. At the same time, in response to what they considered the ambush of their troops by Hijri’s forces, the government massively mobilised troops and began a siege of the city, attacking with tanks, mortars and heavy weaponry. And so, if the government and Bedouin forces were not already one, as claimed by many Druze, they effectively became one in the process. This was a fateful, destructive and unnecessary decision, which I will comment on below. Israel began bombing Syrian tanks on Monday, then stepped it up on Tuesday, killing at least 15 government troops, further fueling sectarian rage around the country.

After some 24 hours of conflict, the government security forces and the main Druze religious and military leaderships, including Hijri, the other two main religious leaders, Yousef Jarbou and Hamoud al-Hanawi, along with Laith al-Balous, associated with the powerful Men of Dignity militia which fought the Assad regime, signed a peace agreement on Tuesday. Fighting would cease, “the entry of the Interior and Defence Ministries’ forces in order to impose control over the security and military centres and to secure the province” was “welcomed,” Druze militia were called upon to “organise their weapons under the supervision of state institutions,” and the state was called on to activate its institutions “in cooperation with the province’s people.”

What happened next is again disputed. Many reports claim that, 30 minutes after the meeting ended, Hijri repudiated his own signature, claiming it was made under pressure, and called on Druze to rise up and attack government forces, and for “external Druze” (ie in Israel) to come to their aid. According to one source, Hijri’s forces “launched simultaneous ambushes against government forces across a dozen locations in the city, timed perfectly with renewed Israeli airstrikes.” The obvious coincidence between Hijri’s and Israel’s actions demonstrates what gave a local Druze leader the kind of confidence to take on the government’s army and security forces. However, Druze sources on the ground, such as this harrowing account of the ensuing massacre, claim that after their militia allowed in government forces, they at first were peaceful but then launched their all-out horrific attack on Druze civilians, and this is what caused the Druze militia to renew the fight, while other Druze sources claim the government forces never stopped attacking.

It seems clear the fighting did stop for some time. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which tends to have an anti-government bias in its reporting, reported that “the clashes reached an end, after a ceasefire agreement … SOHR activists have reported seeing tanks and armoured vehicles, which have recently been deployed in Al-Suwaida city, withdrawing from the city … Meanwhile, security forces have been deployed in the city’s major streets, amid tense calm which comes after two days of fierce clashes that left tens of fatalities.”

Therefore, the question really is whether Hijri’s rejection of the ceasefire and renewal of hostilities took place before the government forces renewed their attack, or only as a result of the government re-unleashing hostilities. While it is impossible from this distance to determine who shot first next, a couple of things are clear. First, it was initially only Hijri who rapidly rejected the agreement. The other leaders, including Jarbou, Hanawi and Bahlous, and other militia groups, did not do so until fighting had clearly resumed and it became a defensive war. On the whole, there has been a clear division within the Druze leaderships all along: Hijri and the SMC reject cooperating with the government, reject integration, and call for Israeli intervention; the other main leaders prefer to try to de-escalate, to reach agreements with the government, to negotiate towards eventual integration, and reject Israeli intervention.

While it is possible that outside observers exaggerate the differences amongst the Druze leadership, it is useful to listen to Bahlous. Here he takes aim at some of the Druze “religious and political leadership” for acting “unilaterally,” supporting Israeli intervention and “attempts at division,” and even goes so far as claim they bear responsibility for the bloodshed. Likewise, Sheikh Yusuf Jarbou, claims the agreement had widespread support, but noted “Yes, there is support for al-Hijri’s position. We do not deny that, and sometimes it may have an effect on the ground. We respect their opinion, and they must respect our opinion and the opinion of he majority.” He claimed that supporters of Hijri’s position “burdened society with many losses because of their refusal to accept this agreement,” and vigorously condemned Israeli air strikes.

Massacre

But regardless of who shot first, the second undeniable fact is that once hostilities did resume, elements under the leadership of the government armed forces then carried out large-scale horrific atrocities in the city. In one massacre, 12-15 civilians in a guesthouse were murdered. People saw their neighbours killed on the road, or found them dead in their homes. Dozens, at least, are alleged to have been killed in summary executions. Whole families were murdered. A number of truly horrific crimes were reported. Others were killed by snipers or by mortars being fired in the middle of the city. Looting, home destruction, and acts of sectarian humiliation – such as filmed forced shaving of Druze beards and moustaches – also took place.

Water, electricity and fuel were cut off, and violent clashes took place at the entrance to the hospital, which filled up with corpses. A hospital massacre reportedly took place, though there are sharply different versions of who was responsible, but either way the situation there was catastrophic with complete power cut-off, leading to bodies decomposing. Tens of thousands were displaced. Druze describe a complete hell of helplessness and impunity in this period. Druze activists launched ‘Suwayda is Dying’ humanitarian appeals to the world.

Taking the ‘Men of Dignity’ (Rijal al-Karama) militia again as a kind of bellwether, despite Bahlous’ fierce criticism of Hijri’s actions, they are first of all a Druze militia tasked with defending their people, and as government-led forces went on the rampage, their forces strongly mobilised to fight them. By the end of Tuesday, the ‘Men of Dignity’ issued a statement condemning the “monstrous attack,” claiming it was one of the worst attacks on Suweida in “over a century,” by “the forces of the Syrian government, which has violated all the agreed upon pledges and guarantees made this morning.” They claimed to have lost 50 martyrs among. Other Druze militia not associated with Hijri’s group issued similar statements and likewise went to the defence of their compatriots.

According to the SOHR, by end of the fighting with final ceasefire late Wednesday, some 590 people had been killed over the four days; but given that their figure was only 116 people at the time of the first ceasefire on Tuesday, this means nearly 500 deaths occurred in those last 24 hours after the ceasefire ended. SOHR’s breakdown shows some 154 Druze civilians were killed, along with 146 Druze militia fighters, 257 members of the government’s armed forces (plus another 15 government fighters killed in Israeli airstrikes, and several more in the headquarters in Damascus), 18 Bedouin fighters, and 3 Bedouin civilians killed by Druze militia. However, the fact that SOHR’s claim of only 3 Bedouin civilians killed remained unchanged the entire week, even after large scale Druze attacks late in the week (see below), underlines SOHR’s unreliability in my view, and hence I am not using their later updates, which now report 1448 killed altogether (one third government-led forces), until confirmed by other more cautious bodies; that said, I have no doubt that the numbers now really are drastically higher. The much more cautious Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has recorded 814 deaths (and 913 injuries) as of July 24, but emphasises these figures are preliminary, and has yet to do a breakdown of the victims.

Many Syrian government supporters are in denial about the extent of the massacre, but descriptions from inside Suweida bear out the gut-wrenching reality. This essentially renders all the discussion about the provocative actions by the more extreme wing of the Druze leadership, such as the initial ambush of government forces and unilateral rejection of the first ceasefire, purely secondary; while essential to a full analysis of the events, none of it can provide excuses for the gigantic massacre that ensued.

First ‘final’ agreement, revenge operations, and tribal offensive

A new agreement was reached late on Wednesday, and following this all government armed forces – General Security and the army – withdrew from Suweida. Once again, the agreement was signed by all major Druze leaders except Hijri, who called for ongoing resistance against “armed gangs falsely calling themselves a government,” and warned that anyone engaging with the government “will face legal and social accountability, without exception or leniency.” Sheikh al-Jarbou accused Hijri of illegitimately seeking to monopolize Druze leadership.

Following their withdrawal, Druze militia launched attacks on at least 10 Bedouin villages throughout the region. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Hijri’s militia killed dozens of Bedouin in these attacks, leading to forced displacement and widespread migration, within and outside the province, with reports of other human rights violations, massacres and hate speech (eg threats to “kill and burn all members of the Bedouin tribes in Thaala village”). On July 1, the ‘Gathering of Southern Tribes’ issued an urgent humanitarian appeal, claiming “We are being silently exterminated.” In turn, this led to thousands of ‘tribal’ fighters with links to the Suweida Bedouin in Daraa and Deir Ezzor attacking the province in support of their brethren, once again reportedly carrying out massacres, burning villages, firing mortars, looting and other violations, and again, hate speech (eg “we will burn Suweida completely”), while also escorting besieged local Bedouin across provincial borders. Israel again launched attacks against the Bedouin fighters.

This further conflict then led to further negotiations and new agreements; having just withdrawn, the government was now allowed to send its General Security – but not the military – back in for 48 hours to enforce the ceasefire. On Saturday the alliance of tribal fighters agreed to ceasefire and had withdrawn by late in the day; after ensuring their exit from the province, the security forces took up positions on the provincial border to prevent them re-entering; on Sunday the situation was reported to be “calm.” After exchange of hostages, 1500 Suweida Bedouin civilians who had been held hostage by Druze militia were expelled from the province as part of the agreement.

Analysis of final ceasefire agreement – complete rout of government operation

This second or third “final” agreement did not substantially change the terms of the first “final” agreement on Wednesday. According to this agreement which led to the withdrawal of both the army and government security, security would be kept by internal security and police “staffed by local Suweida personnel,” and “police officers and personnel from among Suwayda residents to assume leadership and executive duties in overseeing security in the province;” yet another of the terms is to “fully integrate Suweida into the Syrian state, including restoring service provision and civil state institutions.” Again, the Suweida-Damascus highway would be secured by the government. In his speech announcing the ceasefire terms, Sharaa also affirmed that “we decided to assign some local factions and Sheikhs of Reason with the responsibility of maintaining security in Suweida.”

This is curious wording, because despite talk of “fully integrating” the province, the security regime described is identical to that before the crisis, identical to the agreement reached in early May, that activated government security and police but to be staffed only locally, with the state only responsible for securing the highway, and otherwise keeping out; a huge amount of blood was spilled for no change. And in the final, final agreement, the terms are even clearer, for the complete exit of public security and the Ministry of Defense from the administrative borders of Suweida, and prevention of them re-entering the province. Essentially a complete defeat for the government.

Furthermore, even though it is consistent with the previous agreement his government made, Sharaa seems to be saying that this was only forced on Syria by Israeli bombing. He claimed the decision was made to “put the interests of Syrians above chaos and destruction” as the alternative was “open war with the Israeli entity” which aims to “drag our people into a war they want to ignite on our land, a war with no aim but to tear our country apart.”

Sharaa analyses Israel’s aims very well in this speech, noting that “the Israeli entity has always targeted our stability and sown discord among us since the fall of the former regime, is once again trying to turn our sacred land into never-ending chaos … to break our unity and weaken our ability to move forward with rebuilding and progress.”

However, the problem is not his analysis of Israel’s goals; rather it is that by blaming Israel for the failure of his goal of “integrating” Suweida,” he demonstrates his incomprehension of the fact that if he really did aim to integrate Suweida, based on real unity among Syrian people, then it is his government that totally blew it by attempting a military solution that resulted in a gruesome massacre of the Druze population. And while he targets Hijri, without naming him, for rejecting all cooperation with the government or moves towards integration, and many Syrian government supporters point to the rejection of Hijri’s extremism and pro-Israel position by other Druze leaders, the likely impact of the massacre will be to weaken the position of those like Bahlous who tried to cooperate, to strengthen Hijri’s position and unify the Druze population and leadership against the government. In fact, word has it that Bahlous has left the province and been labelled a “traitor.” Not because he was; but because all his admirable attempts to cooperate with the government were blown up by the brutal massacre.

As sharp Syria researcher Aymenn al-Tamimi put it, “the Syrian government forces blew an opportunity to show that local concerns about the entry of external military and security forces into the province were unjustified.”

Accountability and its discontents

In his speech, Sharaa stressed that “we are committed to holding accountable anyone who overstepped and wronged our Druze community” and in other speeches stated we “strongly condemn these heinous acts and affirm our full commitment to investigating all related incidents and punishing all those proven to be involved,” and so on. These are very good words. Likewise, the ceasefire terms include “the formation of a joint fact-finding committee to investigate the crimes, violations, and abuses reported during the recent violence in Suwayda while identifying the perpetrators and compensating the victims.”

However, there are some reasons why such fine words are unlikely to win back any support among Druze for current Syrian authorities for the foreseeable future, and not only because it is difficult to come back from such a terrifying massacre even in the best of circumstances.

First, all of this was promised after the massacre of Alawites on the Syrian coast in March – of course, this is not entirely fair, as the investigative commission that the government set up has only just released its report, so it is not out of the question that we will see accountability take place, perhaps that is just a matter of time. Either way, the lack of accountability so far obviously contributes to doubt that it will take place with Suweida. And a bigger problem is that neither have any of the genocidal Assadist war criminals been brought to justice, and some of the most infamous are even walking the streets under government protection, meaning that any attempt to punish killers of the Druze or Alawites may confront Sunni resistance. Moreover, even if it is necessary to wait for this process, the government could have pushed forward with other processes, including compensation, official mourning and inclusion of Alawites into the local security forces, but it has shown frankly little interest.

But more important is the fact that something like this could happen again after the experience of the coast. On the coast, local security was overwhelmed after hundreds of their members were slaughtered in the Assadist coup attempt, and undisciplined military brigades, rootless jihadi groups and armed civilians bent on vengeance went on a pogromist rampage. Arguably, government security did well to clear the region in two to three days and end the carnage. But with this experience, the government has few excuses the second time, especially since in Suweida, unlike the more chaotic descent onto the coast to confront the Assadist insurgency, the government forces clearly led the operation.

It is unclear exactly which forces carried out most of the violations in Suweida – government security forces, military brigades, Bedouin fighters, criminals exploiting the situation – and we will need to await proper investigation. SOHR obtained information from locals that cards issued by the Syrian Ministry of Defence were found in possession of several attackers; countless reports speak of attackers in government military or security uniforms, though others also speak more generally of people wearing ‘fatigues’; videos showed Bedouin fighters, already in conflict with the Druze, riding through the streets on government tanks, brandishing their weapons; videos showed fighters approaching the city expressing hate speech and threatening to kill all Druze.

Some claim that Sharaa and his government planned the massacre as a way of consolidating a sectarian Sunni base of support, but in my view this is unlikely; the massacre has resulted in a massive setback to the government’s efforts to restore some stability to the devastated country. It is more likely that it lost control and that forces under its command ran amok. But in the end it makes no difference; it is the result that counts. This once again demonstrates that the government does not have control over the collection of forces that have been patched together as the ‘Syrian army’, many made up of heavily traumatised young male victims of the Assadist genocide; that it does not have a professional, let alone inclusive, armed force at its disposal, seen as legitimate by diverse parts of Syria; the army remains a de facto Sunni Arab army. And after the coastal massacre, the government should have known this. As such, the last thing a government should do is try to impose a military solution on a minority issue.

Imposing military solutions and alienating chunks of Syria

It seems clear that at some point the government made the decision to go well beyond the initial mandate of separating the Druze and Bedouin forces and instead decided to ‘solve’ the six-month Suweida integration issue militarily. Whether it made that decision at the outset, or after the initial bloody ambush by Druze militia, is unclear. There was no way in Syria’s fragile, sectarian circumstances inherited from the Assadist slaughterhouse, the great sectarian lab par excellence, that the imposition of a military solution by an entirely Sunni military, with a huge volume of sectarian preaching and sloganeering in the background, was not going to lead to catastrophic slaughter. Reportedly, even some of the notoriously undisciplined military units which were widely reported to have carried out mass killings of Alawites in March – such as ‘Amshat’ (the Sultan Suleiman Brigade), were, inconceivably, sent to Suweida.

Such a decision to “solve” Suweida’s integration issue militarily seems the only way of explaining the decision to launch a huge siege of Suweida city itself, with tanks and artillery; attempting to take the city by military force was unnecessary if the aim remained merely separating the parties in conflict; separating the forces in rural Suweida while attempting to de-escalate the clashes in the city via negotiating the entry of public security, without the army, would have been more rational. Worse still, this meant the government forces were now besieging Suweida together with the Bedouin forces, even if that had not been the original aim; the government was now effectively on the side of one of the two forces they were supposed to separate. It also meant that the minority Bedouins, already in conflict with the Druze and with genuine grievances, were thereby given the power of impunity.

In one of Sharaa’s final speeches, at the end of the ‘second round’ when the tribal fighters from outside the province agreed to withdraw, Sharaa praised them not just for withdrawing, but for their “heroic stance”, based on their “lofty values and principles” which “motivates them to rush to the rescue of the oppressed,” meaning the local Bedouin who suffered revenge attacks after the government forces withdrew. But, he said, they “cannot replace the role of the state in handling the country’s affairs and restoring security.” While he also stated “the Druze constitute a fundamental pillar of the Syrian national fabric,” his blame for the crisis was laid entirely on “illegal armed groups,” meaning Druze militia. This double standard is not just hypocrisy, it goes to the core of the problem of the government’s project that there should be no armed bodies outside the control of the state; because the tribal brigades, which entered Suweida heavily armed, are obviously outside state control, yet were praised rather than labeled illegal armed groups; minorities are not going to give up their arms if Sunni tribal fighters, or other Sunni jihadist forces, are not also comprehensively disarmed.

Fadel Abdulghani, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said the unrest stems from Syria’s failure to embrace inclusive governance following years of conflict. “This is not just about security,” he said. “Excluding political participation fuels instability.” The fact of the matter is, neither in the political sphere nor in the military-security sphere is the current regime in any way seriously inclusive of minority groups and regions.

The only way that can be overcome is if integration – particularly of regionally-based minority communities such as the Druze in the south, the Alawites on the coast, and the Kurds in the northeast – is carried out in a way that fully democratic, inclusive and respectful of the needs of these communities, and where they are primarily responsible for their own security. While the government can be accused of doing nothing along these lines with the Alawites, there have been positive negotiation processes with both the Druze and the Kurds.

The government’s catastrophic decision to impose a military solution on the Druze issue has not only led to total defeat, with Suweida more independent than previously, but has left a new massive hole in support for the post-Assad Syrian polity, the second after the huge Alawite hole – yet until then, the Druze were largely a supportive constituency, if on their own terms. For the majority of Syrians, the revolution means freedom – the end of a tyrannical regime, the opening of Sednaya and other torture gulags, the freedom to protest and organise, to reconstruct their country bombed into a moonscape by Assad, to begin the process of return of half the population. And this post-Assad reality, the ‘revolution’ let’s say, maintains overwhelming legitimacy among the Syrian majority, as does the current government.

But for the vast majority of Alawites, and now Druze, the current reality is instead one of exclusion, alienation, insecurity and now slaughter. They would now feel much like the vast majority of Syrians felt under Assad. That is not a political statement, simply a statement of reality. It may be salvageable, but it would take a miracle for it to be salvaged in the foreseeable future, or under this government.  

And if support for Israel and its actions among the Druze, and for the more pro-Israel and anti-government Hijri-led wing of the Druze, has come about as a result, the blame lies squarely on the Syrian government for this situation. It is not good, but people react to being slaughtered by accepting help from anyone who offers, regardless of their motivations. Israel’s motivations are to create a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Syria, and using the Druze card is a key part of that strategy. Israel aims to ensure that Syria cannot be re-established as any kind of stable, united state; which means that if the Syrian government acts as a sectarian agent against parts of its population, it plays directly into Israel’s hands – if the regime destroys Syria’s unity, Israel is happy to “help” from the other side.

That said, arguably Israel’s bombings did more to inflame the sectarian situation than help anyone; when looking at casualty figures, the huge numbers of Syrian government troops killed make clear that resistance by Druze militia on the ground was the more decisive factor. Much took place – outrageous Israeli bombing, intransigence and provocative acts by the Hijri wing of the Druze leadership, the violent revenge operations against the Bedouins – but the sheer enormity of the hellish massacre of the Druze is the main story here

by Michael Karadjis

Originally published July 7, 2025 at https://theirantiimperialismandours.com/2025/07/07/israels-aggression-against-syria-the-israel-syria-peace-talks-deceit-the-golani-peoples-national-pact/

In this extraordinary declaration reproduced below, the ‘Civil Assembly of the People of the Golan’ has released a document entitled ‘The National Pact,’ not only condemning ongoing Israeli aggression into the (until recently) unoccupied part of Golan (ie Quneitra province), but also stressing the right of return of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians expelled from the Golan Heights following Israeli conquest in 1967, stressing that Golan is not some regional issue (ie that can be bargained away) but rather is “a purely Syrian national affair,” and calling for enshrining the rights of Golanis in the constitution and for genuine parliamentary representation in the People’s Assembly “proportional to their numbers exceeding one million,” pointing to the “catastrophes and denial of rights” they have been subjected to for 57 years.

Where did this declaration suddenly come from now? It seems unlikely to be coincidence that this comes just a week after Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa held a meeting with dignitaries from Quneitra and the Golan, where among other things Sharaa stressed that “we reject the past where the president’s region ruled everything,” which seems directly connected to the demand for parliamentary representation and inclusion in the constitution, while condemning Israeli attacks and affirming efforts to halt them through indirect talks with international mediators. So while there is no direct evidence that Sharaa’s meeting with the Golanis prompted them to make this declaration, it at least appears they are connected.

And then why did Sharaa make this trip to Quneitra to attend this special meeting? Many would have noticed much media speculation about “Syria-Israel discussions,” either “indirect” or “direct”, supposedly discussing, depending the imagination of the author, everything from “security matters” to “normalisation.”

According to some anonymous “sources,” the Syrian government is “open to normalising with Israel” or even “open” to ceding to occupied Golan Heights to Israel as a price for “normalising,” so desperate they must be normalise, or that “Syrian sources” say a “peace agreement is possible with Israel by the end of 2025.” But then we get to “Israeli sources” claiming that “Syrian sources” told a “Hezbollah-affiliated outlet” that president Sharaa is open to “diplomatic relations” with Israel but “his supporters” are not, “such a step does not enjoy genuine consensus, even within the team loyal to Sharaa,” so Israel “doubts” it will happen.

Whether there really are any such “Syrian sources” saying anything like any of this is anyone’s guess; all of these endless statements which somehow never seem to come from any public statement by any Syrian leader but are always second hand allegations, hearsay and anonymous “sources”, are likely embellishments of Syrian government messages being used as a form of pressure aimed at destabilising the Syrian government and/or pressuring it into something it does not want to do. If the public statements of Syrian leaders matter in any of this, then there has been zero correspondence between these and the hearsay. But even if we are just relying of second-hand “sources,” they are also far from uniform.

For example, according to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, “According to sources close to the current Syrian leadership, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa is not prepared to sign up to any broader peace agreement with Israel for now.” Or, according to “anti-Zionist Arab Jew” Alon Mizrahi, based on a “report coming out of Israel,” “Syria is not ready for a permanent agreement with Israel or for joining the Abraham Accords at the moment; it is interested instead in going back to the 1974 ceasefire agreement (signed after the 1973 war), which will force an IDF withdrawal from all the territories captured during the last two years, plus a cessation of hostilities against Syria.” Or then there’s US Syria Envoy Tom Barrack, who while asserting that “both sides” were “open to normalization,” claimed that “Syrian officials hint peace may come by 2028.” 2028? I was pleasantly surprised to read that, and also surprised by Barrack’s gullibility; “2028” is another way of saying “sometime in the undefined future” (perhaps after Israel collapses under the weight of its genocide). Barrack added that “Damascus seeks to halt Israeli attacks in Quneitra.”

As we see from these statements, every single time we hear what the Syrian government says, it comes back to the same thing: the demand that Israel return to the 1974 disengagement line that Assad and Israel respected for 51 years, and Israel end its attacks that it began the morning the revolution overthrew Israel’s man Assad. That’s it. Whether secret “direct negotiations” are going on nobody knows; the Syrian government denies it. When in Paris in May, al-Sharaa admitted to the indirect, mediated discussions; he said they were aimed at deescalating the situation in southern Syria, where Israel has been continually attacking, bombing and occupying; he told Macron that “Israel has bombed Syria more than 20 times in the past week alone.” Once again he demanded Israel return to the 1974 disengagement line and that the UN Observer Force return (they were expelled by Israel after December 8).

A May 27 Reuters report about alleged “direct negotiations” over “security” issues in southern Syria named Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Dalati as heading these discussions, to which he responded “I categorically deny my participation in any direct negotiating sessions with the Israeli side and confirm that these allegations are unfounded and lack accuracy and credibility.” On July 2, the Syrian government officially denied that there were any “peace negotiations” taking place with Israel. Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV asserted “There can be no negotiations on new agreements with Israel until it fully respects the 1974 disengagement accord.” Al-Sharaa and the Syrian government have been making the same demand since December. It comes back to that every time. When he met Trump in May, Trump “advised” him to join the Abraham Accords with Israel in return for lifting sanctions, while claiming it was not a condition and Syria needs to “straighten itself out first;” Sharaa’s response was that “we have shown our willingness to implement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel.” On July 8, “sources” claimed that Sharaa had met Israeli National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi during his then visit to the UAE, to which the Syrian Information Ministry responded “there is no truth to the reports about any sessions or meetings being held between President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and Israeli officials,” and then Israel denied it too – especially given that Hanegbi was at the time in the US with Netanyahu!

In April, two US Congressmen visited Syria and advocated for the end of sanctions. They reported that Sharaa would be willing to sign the Abraham Accords if “the right conditions were met.” Notwithstanding what the vague “right conditions” could mean – return of Golan, Arab Peace Initiative for a Palestinian state, who knows? – there was no such statement from the Syrian government, though of course Sharaa no doubt would have fudged some response to encourage them encourage Trump to lift sanctions. When asked about this in an April 30 interview, Shaibani responded “In fact, the word normalisation was not mentioned, and I was present during this meeting. What was discussed was that we want Syria to live in security and stability. The Israeli incidents that they talk about are a matter of Israeli threats and doubts about this matter … The Abraham Accords and normalisation were not mentioned.” When pressed about an Israeli newspaper claim that Damascus is considering joining the Abraham Accords, Shaibani insisted “This matter was not discussed at all, and Washington has not asked us about this issue.”

In recent reportage of US discussions with Israel towards a new Gaza truce, it was said that as a prize for Israel to end or pause the war, there would be a “regional” package which would include “bringing Syria and Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.” Trump apparently thinks he can just deliver whole countries to the Accords without their perrmission. Every Saudi statement for years has emphasised that there will be no normalisation with Israel until it withdraws from all territories occupied in 1967 and allows the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Earlier this the Saudi regime released a 3am statement to once again deliver this message – in as strong a way as possible, declaring its “unwavering position” is “non-negotiable” – as an immediate response to Trump claiming the Saudis no longer made that a condition. But Trump would deliver Saudi Arabia, and also Syria?

Yet by the next day, we read, no, it won’t be the Abraham Accords yet, just a “security agreement.” The next day it becomes “Syria will make a statement that the state of war which has existed with Israel since 1948 no longer exists” – a tall order when Israel has been actively making war on Syria for 6 months straight. Next it was going to be a “non-aggression pact,” an odd idea given that only one side has been engaged in aggression. Next the Golan would be turned into a “peace park.” Next we hear that Israel’s alleged “security” concerns in southern Syria will be taken care of by allowing US troops to patrol the “buffer zone,” the euphemism for the part of southern Syria Israel has annexed since December as a “buffer” to its already illegally occupied “buffer” the Golan itself. Then “sources,” citing “Israeli media,” informed us that the deal was that Israel will give back one third of the Golan, or two-thirds but lease back one third, and Syria will be compensated with northern Lebanon, including the city of Tripoli! Apparently the Lebanese government is supposed to simply agree! When it got to actual Syrian government statements, however, that article could only,  yet again, cite Syrian foreign minister Shaibani demanding Israel return to the 1974 lines.

Clearly, if we are to take too much notice of all this media manipulation, our heads would spin. As the Syrian government says, there can be no talks on anything before Israel returns to the 1974 disengagement lines. But that’s all it says – that “talks” would thereby be possible. There is no suggestion from Syria that “talks” would lead to the Abraham Accords. People are entitled to think that’s what it means; and given Syria’s precarious situation crushed between the desperate need for reconstruction of its destroyed country, the need to put an end to non-stop Israeli aggression, and the need for investment and above all the full release of US sanctions, the Syrian government is entitled to allow its deliberately vague language to be interpreted by the US government in a way to try to achieve those goals, while in reality not promising anything.

Of course, returning to the 1974 lines does not solve the bigger problem of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. Obviously Syria, a victim of a decade of genocidal mass murder and apocalyptic destruction by the Assad regime, Russia and Iran, is in no position to open a military front on the Golan at this point. As Sharaa put it in December, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts,” the country must instead focus on reconstruction of half the country Assad destroyed, including housing for the half the country uprooted from their homes either internally or in exile; and indeed, as a transitional leader who simply filled the vacuum opened by the collapse of the Assad regime, before any elections have been held, he has no mandate to open a military front against a crazed nuclear armed genocidal entity and force the Syrian people to commit suicide. His mandate is reconstruction, recovery, and return of refugees. However, for exactly the same reason, he also has no mandate to cede any chunk of Syrian sovereign territory, such as the Golan, for “peace.” 

Despite much nonsense from “sources,” every statement made by Syrian leaders on the Golan declares it to be Syrian territory that must be returned. On January 17, Syria’s UN ambassador Koussay Aldahhak, in a UN session condemning Israel’s aggression into the ‘buffer zone’, also “reaffirm[ed] Syria’s inalienable right to recover the occupied Syrian Golan in full.” When asked during a February interview with The Economist whether he would be ready to normalise with Israel, president Sharaa replied “actually we want peace with all parties,” but as long as Israel occupied the Golan, any agreement would be premature. At another UN session on April 10, Aldahhak demanded implementation of UN resolutions 242, 338 and 497 and “the end of the Israeli occupation of the occupied Syrian Golan.” When Shaibani attended the Munich Security Conference with European and Middle Eastern leaders in February, he stated that the “Golan Heights are Syrian land and no one has the right to give it to anyone.” In April, while condemning ongoing Israeli aggression, he again stressed that “the Golan Heights continue to be considered occupied territory, in clear violation of the UN Charter.” In late April, the Syrian foreign ministry, in rejecting speculation about the Abraham Accords, noted that “such agreements do not apply to a country whose land remains under occupation.” The same article above reporting the July 2 statement that no talks are possible without Israeli withdrawal to the 1974 lines, also cited a source within Syria’s foreign ministry adding that Syria’s foremost condition for any “peace process” is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights;” another source claims “Damascus will not consider any diplomatic initiative that falls short of restoring Syrian sovereignty over all occupied territory, including the entirety of the Golan Heights.”  

It is also worth noting, given some discourse claiming “the Gulf” is adding to “western” pressure to normalise with Israel (as if “the Gulf” were not divided into different countries with often very different regional politics, especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), that the Gulf Cooperation Council also issued a July 2 statement not only “condemn(ing) Israeli violations and repeated attacks on Syria,” but also “confirm(ing) that the Golan Plateau is a Syrian Arab land.” Given that Israel’s key condition for a “peace” agreement with Syria is that Israel keep the illegally annexed Golan, as Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar has just reaffirmed, this makes it very clear that there is no basis for any “normalisation” discussions.

To reaffirm: Syria has made no statement to the effect that it would sign a peace agreement with Israel without the return of the Golan; however, again note the language – return of the Golan is the precondition for any “peace process” to (possibly) begin, not for a peace agreement to be made or for “normal relations” to be established. To clarify: Syria has also made no statement that it would sign a peace agreement with Israel even if it did return the Golan – though of course since we know Israel will never return it, it is OK for Syria to hide behind this for now. Incidentally, Assad, by contrast, did explicitly state that he was ready to join his best friends in the Arab world (Egypt, UAE, Bahrain etc) in normalising with Israel if it returned the Golan Heights: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land.” Sharaa has NOT said that. Assad mentioned nothing about Palestine or “resistance” in this interview; and in any case, we are well aware that both in 1999-2000 and in 2009-2011, Assad father and son were engaged in precisely such ‘land for peace’ negotiations with Israel (blocked only by Israeli intransigence on returning the Golan). Notably, this statement by Assad puts him to the right of Saudi Arabia on the Israel question.

The problem is, however, not what “sources” imagine Sharaa wants or doesn’t want; nor even necessarily what Sharaa wants or doesn’t want; nor the opinions of leftist keyboard warriors wet dreaming that already massively traumatised Syrians should be engaged in suicidal “resistance” for their benefit (they mostly didn’t care that Assad never engaged in such “resistance” and never opened any front on the Golan for 51 years and was widely praised by Zionist leaders, including Netanyahu, for this). No, the problem is that Syria is not like any other Arab country except Palestine itself (and to some extent Lebanon): Syria is a devastated country under aggressive Israeli attack and occupation, daily attacks, bombings, killings, arrests, destruction of farmland, of water sources, ever since the morning of December 8. And of course, Israel also immediately destroyed 90 percent of all Syria’s strategic weaponry immediately after December 8, weaponry it had no problem with as long as it was in Assad’s hands, because they knew Assad only ever used it against the Syrian people. And in their occupation of extra Syrian lands since December, they are now in control of the al-Mantara dam, the major water source for all of southern Syria: think about that for a moment.

Every day, Netanyahu, foreign minister Saar and defence minister Katz call Syrian leaders jihadists, extremists, terrorists and al-Qaeda (just like western tankies do). Now they say we want to sign the Abraham Accords with them. Really? They want to make a peace accord with jihadi terrorists? No. The demand itself is an act of aggression. The demand says: we will continue to bomb your country, occupy the south, seize farmers land, destabilise the country, and have a stranglehold over your water, unless you both sign away the Golan Heights and sign a “peace” treaty with Israel on that basis. Syria needs our solidarity, not our ignorance or our keyboard heroism.

I read ignorant statements from critics that “the new Syrian government is “rushing” to make peace with Israel, apparently unaware of Israel’s war on Syria. News reports of the indirect or alleged “direct” talks between Syrian and Israeli officials suggest this may indicate “warming” of relations. Strange discourses assert that Syria is engaged in indirect or “direct” talks with Israel “despite” Israel’s ongoing attacks on Syria; the “despite” indicates just how much these writers don’t get it. Israel – a massively armed genocidal entity – is in occupation of Syrian territory and has been constantly attacking Syria – a devastated, disarmed, exhausted country – since December 8. Of course Syria engages in mediated “negotiations” with the aggressor, the occupier, to try to get it to end its aggression and occupation. It is normal that countries negotiate with their enemies, their aggressors. To depict “negotiations” between the powerful occupier and the powerless occupied country as some kind of equal negotiation about to “normalise” is to miss the point fantastically.

I repeat there has been zero suggestion from the actual mouths of Syrian leaders about either ceding the Golan or normalising with Israel. But that does not make it out of the question at some point; this is not a confident prediction of what will or won’t happen in the future, given the situation which Syria is in. On one hand, Israel continues its daily aggression and occupation in the south; at the same time, despite Trump’s lifting of sanctions, the US is capable of slowing down or reversing that process – several days ago Trump stated that “the Secretary of State will reimpose sanctions on Syria if it’s determined that the conditions for lifting them are no longer met.” That’s what all this aggression since December 8 is about.  If devastated, destroyed, disarmed Syria were to capitulate at some point (more likely some “security arrangement” than full normalisation), it is important to recognise that it would be something forced on Syria by overwhelming pressure and endless aggression; that must be the greater context through which any “condemnations” of any such capitulation are made.

Now here’s where we return to where we began – up till this point, all this has been on the level of states and geopolitics. By going to the grassroots – by going to the people of Quneitra and the refugees from occupied Golan, and getting this statement from them, Sharaa made a deft move: he helped make it much harder for himself, or any Syrian government, now or future, to sign away the Golan for “peace” with Israel.

Below is the declaration and introduction by the Zaman Al Wasl news agency.

The people of the Golan declare the National Pact: No concession on identity… and no alternative to return

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1940135842204590465&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Ftheirantiimperialismandours.com%2F2025%2F07%2F07%2Fisraels-aggression-against-syria-the-israel-syria-peace-talks-deceit-the-golani-peoples-national-pact%2F&sessionId=974d85ce331d0dce832d9b32e98234e2c8f7eb1a&theme=light&widgetsVersion=2615f7e52b7e0%3A1702314776716&width=550px

In a remarkable step, the ‘Civil Assembly of the People of the Golan’ has released a document entitled ‘The National Pact,’ in which they outlined a series of demands they considered “legitimate and just,” affirming their commitment to defending them in all Syrian forums, considering the Golan issue “not a local matter, but a purely Syrian national affair.”

The statement, a copy of which was received by Zaman AlWasl, stated that Quneitra Governorate, the heart of the Golan, continues to suffer from Israeli occupation attacks, land confiscation, and home demolitions, while hundreds of thousands of Golanis displaced since the June 1967 setback live dispersed across five Syrian governorates.

The document emphasized the need to unify the voice of the Golanis inside Syria and in displacement camps, in order to crystallize their political, service, and constitutional rights. The signatories emphasized that what they put forward “is not merely sectarian demands, but rather national and moral obligations.”

Key points of the document:

1- Support for the legitimate Syrian leadership:

The people of the Golan declared their support for President Ahmad al-Sharaa, colnsidering that his leadership “represented the will of the people and led the country toward liberation.”

2- Rejection of Israeli attacks:

The statement condemned what it described as “repeated Israeli aggression against Quneitra lands,” warning against “attempts to complete the occupation of the remaining Golan.”

3- Adherence to the right of return:

The people of the Golan affirmed their full commitment to the right of return to their occupied land, based on United Nations resolutions, rejecting any understandings or agreements that would infringe upon or undermine this right.

4- Rejection of the “administrative integration” project:

The statement warned against the project to integrate displaced communities into other governorates, considering it “an attempt to obliterate the Golan identity and a pretext for closing the Golan file internationally.” It also paves the way for the abolition of the Quneitra governorate.

5- Demand for Full Parliamentary Representation:

The signatories demanded that the Golanis be granted genuine representation in the People’s Assembly, commensurate with their population of over one million, pointing to the “catastrophes and denial of rights” they have been subjected to for 57 years.

6- Legal Recognition of the Rights of Displaced Persons:

The demands included the right to adequate housing, employment opportunities, and a decent standard of living, similar to what is stipulated in the United Nations conventions for displaced persons around the world.

7- Enshrining Rights in the Constitution:

The statement called for the inclusion of the rights of the Golanis in the constitution or in a permanent law, “so that the demands do not turn into a seasonal debate that is repeated with each new government.”

8- Moral and National Obligation:

The statement concluded with a recommendation that this document be considered “a moral and national charter for all Syrians,” particularly those who will hold representative positions in legislative bodies.

According to the Golan Heights Civil Gathering, this document emerged after months of consultations between representatives from Quneitra and the displacement camps. It will serve as a reference for any national dialogue on the Golan Heights issue.

– Zaman al-Wasl

July 1, 2025

by Michael Karadjis

Originally published on December 19, 2024 at https://theirantiimperialismandours.com/2024/12/19/israels-massive-attack-on-free-syria-background-and-motivations/

It didn’t take long: from the moment the Assad regime collapsed and the rebels entered Damascus, Israel’s massive land and air attack began. As long as all these arms depots, military airports, intelligence centres, scientific research centres, air bases, air defence systems, ammunition manufacturing facilities, “small stockpiles of chemical weapons,” and Syria’s entire naval force were safely in the hands of the Assad regime, Israel never touched them. As Syrian revolutionary commentator Rami puts it, Israel has “known their location the whole time but felt safe knowing that they were in Assad’s hands, who uses them exclusively on Syrians,” and certainly never against Israel. “Now that Free Syrians are in control Israel panics and starts bombing them all,” in order to prevent, as countless Israeli leaders have declared, these weapons falling into the hands of the former rebels, who Israeli leaders have described as a “hostile entity.”

According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, since the rebels took control of Syria, “Israel says it has attacked some 500 regime targets, dropped 1,800 precision bombs, destroyed about half of Assad’s air force, much of the regime’s tanks and missile launch capabilities, 80% of its air defense systems, all its explosive UAVs and 90% of its radar systems as well as the chemical weapons still held in Syria.” The open source intelligence monitor OSINTdefender claims the IDF has eliminated some 70-80 percent of Syria’s military capacity, the locations including “anti-aircraft batteries, Syrian Air Force airfields, naval bases, and dozens of weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra,” resulting in the destruction of “Scud Tactical-Ballistic Missiles, Cruise Missiles, Surface-to-Sea, Sea-to-Sea, Surface-to-Air and Surface-to-Surface Missiles, UAVs, Fighter Jets, Attack Helicopters, Ships, Radars, Tanks, Hangars, and more.”

“Israeli warplanes bombed the intelligence and customs buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus.” The intelligence buildings? Wonder what deals between Israel and the Assad regime they did not want anyone to find there? The Golan sale, perhaps? The dealings between Israel and the Assad regime over Israel’s bombing of Iranian and Hezbollah targets? Indeed, it is feared that Israel may be destroying evidence against Assad that could be used by the new authorities to place charges against him in the International Criminal Court.

Israel then went right on to completely destroy Syria’s naval fleet, under the nose of Russia’s still present air and naval bases in Tartous and Latakia. The massive strikes Israel launched on Tartous on December 15 were described by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the “most violent strikes” in the region since 2012. A gigantic mushroom cloud fireball blew up over the region, “the explosion was so powerful that it was measured as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake on the seismic sensor.”

Israel expands into the Golan

Israel has also invaded further into the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan to create a “buffer zone” (for its already Golan “buffer zone” 57-year occupation) against the Syrian rebel forces. While it is unclear exactly how much territory has been seized, this map from The New York Times shows the territory held by the IDF as of December 13.

It is clear Israel intends to keep much of the new territory it has conquered. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF would stay on “the Syrian side” of Mount Hermon “during the coming winter months as Israel aims to prevent the border region from falling into the wrong hands.” For Israel, a “temporary” stay has traditionally meant forever, as with the main part of Syria’s Golan Heights which Israel conquered in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981. According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, a senior Israeli military source said that Israeli troops “will not retreat until the threat to Israel’s border is removed, which could take “between four days and four years.”

According to Al Jazeera’s Muntasir Abou Nabout, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have also destroyed roads, power lines, and water networks in Quneitra province (the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan) when people refused to evacuate. “Israeli tanks are now stationed in towns and villages in Syria’s southwest as the Israeli military expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”

In the villages of the al-Rafid region of Quneitra, Israel cut water and electricity to pressure the people to leave, but they refused, and demanded all weapons be handed over. According to one local interviewed by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, “no one knows what their aim is, but for sure they have created a new enemy in the future for themselves.” The local also claimed “they [the IDF] removed the people of the village of Rasm al-Rawadhi under threats, and they prevented those who left the village of al-Hamidiya from returning.”

The IDF also invaded Daraa province, troops deploying in Ma’aryah village in Al-Yarmouk Basin, “patrolling and searching some residents.” They also attempted to enter Abdeen village, “but the residents confronted them and prevented them from entering the village.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli government “unanimously approved” a plan to double the 31,000 Israeli settler population in the Golan Heights itself. When Israel seized the territory in 1967, some 130,000 Syrians were expelled, but some 20,000 Syrian Druze still remain amidst the settlers and steadfastly refuse Israeli citizenship. Yet now Israel is attempting to stir up separatism among the Syrian Druze in the Hader region of the Golan, claiming they want to join Israel out of fear of the new Syrian authorities, despite the strong participation of the Druze in their main region of Suweida and their leaderships in the revolution.

Arab League condemns, US supports Israel; Russia hands over posts to Israel

On December 13, the Arab League strongly condemned this Israeli aggression, and separately Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia Egypt and the UAE have issued strong statements.

Not surprisingly, the US has supported Israel’s aggression, National Security Adviser Sullivan claiming “what Israel is doing is trying to identify potential threats, both conventional and weapons of mass destruction, that could threaten Israel and, frankly, threaten others as well, and neutralize those threats,” as Israel destroys virtually the entire Syrian arsenal with its US-supplied weaponry. The US also supported Israel’s expansion into the Syrian Golan, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller explaining the collapse of the Assad regime “created a potential vacuum that could’ve been filled by terror organizations that threaten Israel.” Sure, he stressed that Israel’s stay should be “temporary,” but the world knows that US words mean nothing in relation to Israel’s actions – indeed Israel’s occupation of the rest of the Golan in 1967 was also supposed to be temporary.

Meanwhile, it was reported on December 9, just as the Israeli attack was mounting, that Russia, as it withdrew from the south, handed over to Israel two facilities in Daraa, and an observatory on Mount Tel Al-Hara. As Russian forces have been based in the Golan region since 2018 under a Putin-Trump-Netanyahu-Assad agreement to keep both Syrian rebels and Iran-backed forces away – to protect both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation concurrently – this story rings likely.

Israeli leaders explain their aggression

As the revolution took Damascus and Assad fled early on December 8, IDF Chief Herzi Halevi announced that “combat operations” in Syria were to begin, stating that Israel was now fighting on a “fourth front” in Syria in addition to Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon. Israel’s massive attack on Syria had begun. On December 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz “announced that he had directed the army to establish a “safe zone” on the Syrian side, free of weapons and “terrorist” infrastructure, as he put it,.

Most memes did not go past Israeli propaganda such as Netanyahu’s claim that these events are a “direct result” of Israel’s military campaign against Iran and Hezbollah and his assertion that “this is a historic day in the history of the Middle East.” Sure, who wouldn’t want to feign happiness and try to take credit for the collapse of such a monstrous regime. More important however was what Netanyahu also said: “We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.” On December 15, Netanyahu followed this up claiming that Israel’s actions in Syria were intended to “thwart the potential threats from Syria and to prevent the takeover of terrorist elements near our border”.

Katz also doubled down, declaring on December 15 that “The immediate risks to the country have not disappeared and the recent developments in Syria are increasing the intensity of the threat, despite the rebel leaders seeking to present a semblance of moderation.” On December 18, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel described HTS as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and stated “we are not going to be fooled by nice talk,” claiming “these rebel groups are in fact terrorist groups” and went on to remind about Jolani’s past al-Qaeda links.

Likudist Diaspora Affairs Minister Amachai Chikli made the case more openly, stating that “the events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration. Despite the rebranding of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Shara, the bottom line is that most of Syria is now under the control of affiliates of al-Qaeda and Daesh. The good news is the strengthening of the Kurds and the expansion of their control in the north-east of the country (Deir ez-Zor area). Operatively, Israel must renew its control at the height of the Hermon …  we must not allow jihadists to establish themselves near our settlements.”

The Israeli calculus in the days before the fall

All of this was already discussed in the uncertain days between the first offensive that took Aleppo and the collapse of the regime ten days later. As we will see, Israeli leaders were not exactly “delighted,” as a somewhat unfortunate piece by Juan Cole claimed.  

Israel has always supported the Assad regime against the opposition (see next section); this put it on the same side as its Iranian enemy, with the difference that it preferred the regime without Iran – hence Israel’s strong decade-long partnership with Russia starting with its 2015 intervention to save Assad; since then, the Israel-Russia agreement has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets anywhere in Syria at will, and the world-class Russian S-400 air defence system will not touch them. But Israel always left the Assadist war machine intact.

During Israel’s devastating war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime did nothing to come to the aid of its ally at its moment of existential need, indeed it closed Hezbollah recruitment offices, banned Syrian citizens from fighting abroad, prohibited the traditionally Iran-connected Fourth Division from transferring weapons or providing accommodation to Hezbollah or Iranian forces, confiscated Hezbollah ammunition depots in rural Damascus. The regime even took 48 hours to comment on Israel’s murder of Nasrallah. From the beginning of the Gaza genocide, the Assad regime refused to open a front on the Golan like Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon, as has been widely noted in many reports; the Syrian regime, according to the Lebanese al-Modon, instructed its forces in the Golan “not to engage in any hostilities, including firing bullets or shells toward Israel.” Palestinians were arrested for attempting to hold rallies in solidarity with Gaza.

Since Israel had just come through a war with Hezbollah, it could see the opportunity presented by Assad’s treachery to pressure Assad for more, ie, to completely cut the Iranian weapons transfers to Lebanon. During his November visit to Moscow, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told his Russian hosts that Israel would propose to the US to lift or freeze sanctions on the Assad regime in exchange for any such efforts to prevent the flow of weapons to Hezbollah (indeed this demonstrates how outside of reality are the conspiracy theories that claim, with zero evidence, that Israel was somehow “behind” the HTS offensive that led to fall of Assad, whatever that even means).

As such, taken by surprise, like everyone else, by the rapid successes of the Syrian revolution, Israel tended to adopt a plague on both your houses view, ie, withholding support for Assad in order to pressure his regime for more in its moment of weakness, while warning of the dangers from the other side. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s view expressed on December 3 that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there” was probably closest to the mainstream Israeli view. Saar also said that Israel should “explore ways to increase cooperation” with the Kurds, “we need to focus on their interests.”

On November 29, Netanyahu held a security consultation with “defence” chiefs. He was told that Hezbollah’s forces will now likely shift to Syria, “in order to defend the Assad regime,” which they assessed would “bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding,” making these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term, but “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” The first point, that the blows suffered by the Assad regime “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” is likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, both sources suggest that Israel saw Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria, fighting for Assad, as a “positive” because they are thereby not focused on Israel.

Regarding the second point, the “military threats” which may arise, Channel 12, reporting that the meeting also raised concerns that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime, including “the remnants of [its] chemical weapons,” could fall into the jihadists’ hands, so the IDF “is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act,” ie to destroy this weaponry before it falls into rebel hands, which of course is exactly what has come to pass.

A number of prominent right-wing Israeli spokespeople or security spooks made the case for supporting Assad more forcefully. For example, on November 29, Dr. Yaron Friedman at the University of Haifa penned an article in Maariv claiming that HTS “controls internal terrorism over the entire province of Idlib” and “like Hamas,” receives the support of Turkey and Qatar. He notes that “the opposition consists mostly of Sunni fanatics from the Salafi Jihadi stream” who “look like Hamas terrorists.” He stressed that while “Assad is far from being Israel’s friend … he is the old and familiar enemy” under whom “Syria has not waged a war against Israel for more than fifty years,” while “Bashar al-Assad has not lifted a finger in favor of Hamas or Hezbollah since the beginning of the war in Gaza.” Therefore, “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy. The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view.”

Eliyahu Yosian, former intelligence officer from Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 – suspected of being behind Israel’s massive cyber-terrorist attack on Hezbollah members pagers which blew off people’s faces and hands – explained on December 5, “Personally, I support Assad’s rule, because he is a weak enemy and a weak enemy serves our interests. No-ne can guarantee who will come after Assad’s fall.” He noted that Israel can attack in Syria “every so often in coordination with Russia and without any threat.” Therefore “We must support Assad’s existence.”

One possibility discussed was for Israel to invade and establish a “buffer zone” in southern Syria if the regime collapsed or was close to collapsing.

This view was put forcefully by Lt.-Col. Amit Yagur, another former senior intelligence officer (who had earlier called for Israel to “drive Iran out of Syria”). On December 6, he claimed that what the rebels had achieved constituted “a tectonic collapse of the Sykes-Pilot agreement, a major collapse of the foundations of the old order,” and therefore “we need to ensure there is a buffer zone between us and the Sunnis.” This buffer zone “could be fully secured by IDF officers,” which however was “less realistic,” or “guarded by forces of Assad’s regime,” which presumably he thought was more realistic, “so that we don’t end up with a shared border with these guys,” making reference to October 7.

Not all Zionist commentators held these views. Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, explained that there are voices now challenging the “the traditional Israeli approach of preferring Assad — the devil we know,” with a view of delivering a blow to Iran by getting rid of the Assad regime. In fact, one of the problems for Israel was the same problem for Russia and Iran – if the despot you have relied on for decades to service your varied and even opposing interests can no longer maintain that “stability,” but on the contrary, his house collapses like a pack of cards, then continued support would not just be a bad investment, but be utterly pointless.

In this light, what is striking about all these views expressed above – even just days before the regime’s collapse – is how extraordinarily unrealistic they were; they all seemed to imagine that Assad still had a chance! Such blindness at such a late date suggests wilfulness, ie, Israel was so invested in the regime’s survival that it impossible to imagine it not being there, even if only running the buffer zone! Indeed, even Zisser notes of the move among some Zionists towards accepting Assad’s downfall as a defeat for Iran, “for the moment at least, the Israeli leadership is not considering such a possibility.”

Background: Israel and the Syrian revolution 2011-2018

Anyone confused about this should not be. If you have been exposed to either mainstream media or tankie propaganda depicting Israel and the Assad regime to be enemies, this documentation below will demonstrate that throughout the Syrian conflict, Israeli leaders (political, military and intelligence) and think tanks continually expressed their preference for the Assad regime prevailing against its opponents, and were especially appreciative of Assad’s decades of non-resistance on the occupied Golan frontier.

Of course that does make them friends, but the “conflict” between Israel and Syria is quite simple: Israel seized Syria’s Golan in 1967 and has steadfastly refused to ever negotiate it back. That is not an Assad issue; it is a Syrian issue, the opposition has made continual statements on Syria’s right to use all legitimate means to regain the Golan. When asked if he would follow his close Arab allies – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan – in establishing relations with Israel, Assad’s response noted only the Golan, avoiding mention of ‘resistance’ or Palestine: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, it is possible when Israel is ready, but it is not and it was never ready …  Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.” Assad, in other words, wanted to be Sadat, but Israel didn’t let him.

From 2012:

Israel’s intelligence chief, Major General Aviv Kochavi, “warned that “radical Islam” was gaining ground in Syria, saying the country was undergoing a process of “Iraqisation”, with militant and tribal factions controlling different sectors of the country”, and claiming there was “an ongoing flow of Al-Qaeda and global jihad activists into Syria”. He said that with the Assad regime weakening, “the Golan Heights could become an arena of activity against Israel, similar to the situation in Sinai, as a result of growing jihad movement in Syria.”

From 2013:

“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would erect a new security fence along its armistice line with Syria because “We know that on the other side of our border with Syria today, the Syrian army has moved away, and global jihad forces have moved in.” “We must therefore protect this border from infiltrations and terror, as we have successfully been doing along the Sinai border.”

In an interview with BBC TV, Netanyahu called the Syrian rebel groups among “the worst Islamist radicals in the world… So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists,” he said.

“Israel’s military chief of staff has warned that some of the rebel forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may soon turn their attention southward and attack Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights. We see terror organisations that are increasingly gaining footholds in the territory and they are fighting against Assad,” Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz said at a conference in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. “Guess what? We’ll be next in line.”

Israel also “worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary” than Assad has ever been. “The military predicts all that (the 40-year peaceful border) will soon change as it prepares for the worst.” The region near the occupied Golan has become “a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests,” said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general, claiming Syria has now become “a big threat to Israel” over the last two years.

‘Israel’s Man in Damascus – Why Jerusalem Doesn’t Want the Assad Regime to Fall’ – heading in Foreign Affairs (May 10, 2013), article by Efraim Halevy, who served as chief of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002.

Israeli defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while Israel “is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons at present because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the Syrian government).”

[comment: as we can see, the Israeli view that chemical weapons were
no problem in Assad’s hands but must be destroyed if he falls, being
enacted now, goes way back]

From early 2015:

Dan Halutz, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, claimed that Assad was the least harmful choice in Syria, so western powers and Israel “should strengthen the Syrian regime’s steadfastness in the face of its opponents.” Allowing Assad to fall would be “the most egregious mistake.”

From 2015 (shortly before the Russian intervention to save Assad which Israel supported):

IDF spokesperson Alon Ben-David stated that “The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border;” as a result, military intelligence services are “working on the **preparation of a list of targets** that are likely to be struck inside Syria, **after a possible fall of the Assad regime**.”

[two points: first, clearly, that “list of targets” has come in handy
now that “the fall of the Assad regime” has come about; second, this
also suggests that Israel was not against Iran and Hezbollah being in
Syria as long as they were only defending Assad, rather than delivering
missiles to Lebanon]

From 2015 (after onset of Russian intervention):

At the time when Israel is getting ready for the first coordination meeting with Russia over their joint intervention in Syria, Israeli military sources have confirmed the existence of consensus within Tel Aviv’s decision making circles over the importance of the continuation of the Assad regime. Military affairs commentator Alon Ben-David quoted a source within the Israeli Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying “the best option for Israel would be for the Assad regime to remain and for the internal fighting to continue for as long as possible.” In an article published in Maariv newspaper, the military source pointed out that the continuation of the Assad regime, which enjoys international recognition, relieves Israel of the burden of direct intervention and of deep involvement in the ongoing war. He noted that Israel agrees with both Russia and Iran on this matter.

Israel will provide Russia with intelligence information about opposition sites in Syria to facilitate Moscow’s military operations, Channel 2TV reported, noting that a delegation of Russian army officials will arrive in Israel to coordinate the military cooperation.

From 2017:

The ‘Begin-Sadat Centre’ think tank published an article claiming that as Israel is “surrounded by enemies,” it “needs those enemies to be led by strong, stable rulers who will control their armies and prevent both the firing on, and infiltrations into, Israeli territory,” noting that both Assads had always performed this role. The fact that “Syria is no longer able to function as a sovereign state … is bad for Israel” and therefore “a strong Syrian president with firm control over the state is a vital interest for Israel. Given the Islamist alternatives to his rule, Syria’s neighbours, including Israel, may well come to miss him as Syria is rapidly Lebanonised.”

From 2018 (as Assad regime re-took the south all the way to the Golan “border” with Israel from the rebels, with the support of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu):

Israel’s National Security Adviser, Meir Ben Shabat, declared in early June that Israel has no problem with Assad remaining in power as long as the Iranians leave; Knesset member Eyal Ben Reuven stressed that the stability of the Assad regime was “pure Israeli interest.” Another Israeli politician told Al-Hurra TV that “There’s no animosity nor disagreement between us and Bashar al-Assad … he protects Israel’s interests … We now will return to the situation as it was before the revolution.”

Not to be outdone, Netanyahu declared “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.”

In case this was not yet clear enough, at a July meeting with his US counterpart, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border”.

After noting that “the Syrian front will be calmer with the return of the Assad rule,” the fascistic Lieberman stressed  that “Israel prefers to see Syria returning to the situation before the civil war, with the central rule under Assad leadership.” Further, he noted that “we are not ruling anything out” regarding the possibility of Israel and the Assad regime establishing “some kind of relationship.”

It is clear from this summary that Israel’s attack today as soon as Assad was overthrown has been planned for years for precisely such a time precisely because Israel wanted his rule to continue.

Syria’s condemnation of Israel to UN Security Council – and demands that Syria “fight Israel”

In a joint letter to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly dated December 9, the new Syrian government stated that it “condemns in the strongest terms this Israeli aggression, which represents a serious violation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement … It also constitutes a violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, the unity and integrity of its territories, and contradicts the principles and Charter of the United Nations, the provisions of international law, and Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, and 497.” The letter then “renews its call on the United Nations and the Security Council to assume their responsibilities and take firm measures to compel Israel to immediately cease its ongoing attacks on Syrian territory, ensure that they are not repeated, and withdraw immediately.”

Much has been made of the fact that, while condemning the Israeli aggression in the UN, the new government has not been very vocal otherwise. There are also literal mountains of disinformation around in social media, in mindless memes and photoshop cut-up jobs, claiming the new government wants to “make peace” with Israel and so on (some useful rebuttals here). Many Assad-loving keyboard warriors are condemning the new government for not “fighting” the Israeli attack.

After 50 years of the Assad regime never firing a shot across the Golan demarcation line, these heroes now condemn a government for not “fighting Israel” in 10 days in power.

One might have noticed that the first thing Israel did was to destroy Syria’s entire military arsenal before it could do anything at all, a military arsenal that Assad never once used against the occupation regime. Presumably they expect Syria to fight the neighbouring genocidal military powerhouse, its warplanes and missiles, with sticks and stones.

As Jolani put it, quite logically, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts.” That is not a call for a “peace” treaty with the occupation, but a statement of fact. The Syrian people have just come through a 14-year war against their own genocidal regime, the regime of Sednaya-Auschwitz, but these western keyboard heroes now believe that the only way the new Syrian government can show its mettle to them (since this is what is important) is by plunging into war with another genocidal regime.

What they might also consider is that while it is Russia that has been bombing the Syrian people for a decade, the new leadership came to an agreement with Russia that it could keep its naval base in Tartous for now, committing itself to not allowing it to be attacked! That’s because they don’t want conflict with that nuclear-armed genocidal power either. This follows HTS’s overtures to Russia earlier in the offensive, when it declared “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia, calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime or the persona of Bashar, but rather with the Syrian people in its history, civilisation and future” as “ we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.” The government has also made direct contact with Iran, pledging to protect Shiite shrines, but also giving safe passage to exiting Iranian forces, despite their years of crimes in Syria.

If anything, Jolani’s statement that Syria is in no state to enter a new conflict just now due to exhaustion could well be interpreted by Israel as a medium-term threat. The statements by Israeli leaders justifying their aggression suggest that’s how they view it. Right now, the important thing is for Israeli aggression, destruction and occupation to end, and shooting your mouth off with jihadist slogans, where Israeli leaders and many world leaders and media keep reminding everyone of HTS’s distant past “al-Qaeda” links, would be extremely foolish. No doubt Israel would prefer they did, so it could then bomb Damascus and receive congratulations from its uncritical US backer.

For the entire year since October 7, the Assad regime and Russia had bombed the liberated enclave of Idlib where HTS was ruling, under the cover of Gaza. The entire time, people in Idlib and other opposition-controlled regions were out demonstrating their support for Gaza, while being bombed. The charges against HTS in particular make even less sense, given its strong support for Hamas and for October 7, for better or worse. Jolani has also been filmed boasting that “after Damascus comes Jerusalem,” but of course this kind of rhetoric, so reminiscent of similar Iranian rhetoric, should be taken metaphorically. Yes, any new regime can sell out – there are no guarantees about anything – but if it did, it would face a Syrian population overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, and there is little point in idle speculation now.

Rather, when Jolani says the focus right now is on stabilising the situation in Syria, this is completely logical. A fractured Syria, getting even more destroyed by foolishness, would have no ability to help Palestinians or to revive its place in the Arab world. More importantly, this is a very critical and dangerous time for the Syrian revolution, when putting a step wrong can have devastating consequences.

With Russia cutting off wheat supplies, Syria is looking for food; the search for literally hundreds of thousands missing is still going on, with the most horrific discoveries turning up in slaughterhouses like Sednaya; people are having to face the grim reality that the majority will not be found alive, as enormous mass graves are being discovered; hundreds of the released have lost their memories and their minds; basic services have had to be restored; the rush is on to preserve as much intelligence information as possible, before being stolen by looters or destroyed by Israeli bombs; the mass return of millions of Syrians has begun. This is what is important; this is what Israel is trying to disrupt with its aggression.

The way in which the Sunni-majority led revolution has made overtures to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds has to date been exceptional and has been key to the success of the revolution. The main fault line at present is in the northeast, largely controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Two things are happening. On the one hand, some of the Arab-majority regions within the SDF-run autonomous statelet have revolted against the SDF and joined the main body of Syrian governance, particularly in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa. On the other hand, Turkey, via its proxy SNA, is also attacking Kurdish regions aiming to destroy Kurdish self-rule; while Manbij, which they took from the SDF via a US-negotiated agreement, is a majority Arab city, they are now threatening to move on iconic Kurdish Kobani. To date, HTS has had a much better approach to the Kurdish question and to relations with the SDF than Turkey and the SNA have, but the future is uncertain.

This Turkey-Kurdish question cannot be dealt with in this essay, but how the government deals with it is crucial to the revolution. Israel sees division as a means of entry, Israeli propaganda projecting the Druze and Kurds as Israel’s natural allies. As seen in some of the statements above from Israeli leaders such as Amachai Chikli and Gideon Saar, supporting “the Kurds” is promoted as a key Israeli geopolitical interest; meanwhile, Israel is trying to get the Druze in the Golan to join Israel. There are even fantastic ideas of a ‘Druze state’ in southern Suweida, and a Kurdish state in the east, forming a bridge to Iraqi Kurdistan, with an oil pipeline joining them to Israel; “by leveraging ties with the Syrian Druze and fostering collaboration with Israel’s Kurdish allies, the foundation for this corridor can begin to take shape,” claims the Jerusalem Post. Both the main Druze leadership in Suweida – a key part of the revolution – and the Druze spiritual leadership in Hader itself, along with the Kurdish SDF leadership, completely reject such ideas. But this demonstrates how an increased Turkish-SNA attack on the Kurds, or any step wrong by HTS on religious minorities such as the Druze, could be exploited by Syria’s enemies. 

Israel’s interests

This example suggests one important Israeli interest – using the instability and moment of weakness of a revolution to make a land grab – no need to explain why the permanent ‘Greater Israel’ project would want to do that – and extending its hegemony into a chunk of the Arab region via “minorities.” However, this exploitation of minority issues is not only about fostering its influence, but also a means to undermine the revolution. There is no mystery about Israel wanting to do this: genocidal colonial settler-regimes like Israel – like other imperialist states – hate popular revolutions, especially in the Arab world. Not only did Israel have a good working relationship with the Assad regime as demonstrated above, but more generally the mutual existence of apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has always been symbiotic.

Many “left” Assad apologists, who are embarrassed that Israel has only attacked after the downfall of Assad, are trying to save face by saying “see, Assad’s fall makes Syria weak and Israel can do what it wants.” Think of that for a moment: it is an argument that people should not overthrow dictators, even genocidal ones, because when you make a revolution you get attacked by imperialist powers or other powerful reactionary states. Perhaps Russians should not have made a revolution because Russia first temporarily lost a great chunk of territory to the invading German army at Brest-Litovsk, and then had to face another 20 or so western armies of invasion. The argument is ludicrous, and counterrevolutionary.

Let’s look at three aspects that make Israel terrified of the Syrian revolution.

• Concern about ‘jihadists’ and ‘terrorists’

The first, the most superficial, is the one that Israeli leaders promote, and is most useful for mass consumption: as seen in so many of the quotes above, Israel does not want “terrorists” or “jihadists” to get their hands on weapons that were previously safely in the hands of the Assad regime, because they might use them to launch attacks “on Israel” (or more likely, the occupied Golan). This cannot be dismissed out of hand. At an immediate level, Israel would have such a fear, especially in times of “chaos,” when a new government does not have clear control of all armed forces and so on.

But any such attacks would do nothing to help Syria, let alone Palestine, whatever the illusions in certain quarters. On the contrary, it would simply be grist in the mill of Zionist propaganda about being “under attack by terrorists” and allow Israel to destroy the whole of Syria, with full US support. Whatever the past rhetoric of HTS, the fact that it has pledged not to do that is entirely logical, especially in current circumstances, and politically defangs Israel’s arguments.

• Threat of spread of uprising via regional Sunni Islamist populism

The second aspect is the regional Sunni ‘Islamist’ aspect, not meaning fanatical ‘jihadism’ but more the populist Muslim Brotherhood-type connections between these activists in Sunni majority countries Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and the Gulf. HTS’s marked ‘softening’ puts it more in this camp than anything related to its distant past al-Qaeda connections. The support given by Hamas – the Palestinian MB – to the Syrian revolution both in 2011-2018 and now flows quite organicially from these connections, as does the support given to Gaza by HTS and other Syrian rebel groups and a year of demonstrations in Idlib and northern Aleppo. The MB has been a major opposition force in Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere, and in Jordan in particular it has played a major role in mobilising against the Jordanian regime’s collaboration with Israel.

Put simply, a popular revolution in one Arab country may be just too good an example for people suffering under other Arab dictators whose relationships with Israel are more out in the open than the one it had with Assad, and these religious-political connections may facilitate this. The fact that the ‘Abrahams Accord’ countries (in its broadest sense, all who had relations with Israel) and the ‘Assad Accord’ countries were the same – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan etc, with Saudi Arabia supportive but more reticent on both – can be best understood as both an alliance for counterrevolution generally, and an anti-MB alliance in particular. The overthrow of the Jordanian or Egyptian regimes in particular would be a huge boost to the Palestinian struggle.

In this light, we read that Israel’s Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director Ronen Bar and IDF Military Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder visited Jordan on December 13 to meet Maj. Gen. Ahmad Husni, director of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, “amid concerns the unrest in Syria could spill over to the Hashemite Kingdom.” According to the Jewish News Syndicate, “Jerusalem is worried that the overthrow of the Assad regime by Syrian rebel factions including terrorist elements led by the Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham could destabilize Jordan … The talks come against the backdrop of fears in Jerusalem that extremist groups in Jordan could try to replicate the swift ouster of Bashar Assad by attempting to remove King Abdullah II from power.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, “Arab diplomats have also expressed alarm over a potential “domino effect” in the region. … An Arab diplomat from the region said this week that authorities in Egypt, Jordan, and neighboring states are monitoring Syria closely. There is growing apprehension that the Syrian rebellion could inspire Islamist movements elsewhere.” Meanwhile, Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the UAE president, has stated that “the nature of the new forces, the affiliation with the [Muslim] Brotherhood, the affiliation with Al-Qaeda, I think these are all indicators that are quite worrying.”

In this light, the Biden administration has just asked Israel to approve U.S. military assistance to the Palestinian Authority’s security forces for a major operation they are conducting to regain control of Jenin in the West Bank. According to Axios, the PA “launched the operation out of fear that Islamist militants — emboldened after armed rebels took control of Syria — could try to overthrow the Palestinian Authority.” One Palestinian official said “It was a Syria effect. Abbas and his team were concerned that what happened in Aleppo and Damascus will inspire Palestinian Islamist groups,” also claiming that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia support the operation in Jenin to prevent “a Muslim-brotherhood style or an Iranian-funded takeover” of the PA.

At this stage it is unclear to what extent such ‘fears’ will eventuate, but these moves, visits, talks and statements suggest there is concern within the local ruling classes.

• More dangerous threat of democratic, non-sectarian revolution to Zionist project

The third and most fundamental aspect is, once again, related to the spread of revolution, but not specifically the Sunni ‘Islamist’ connection. On the contrary, the extent to which the Syrian revolution can maintain its current popular, democratic and non-sectarian potential could have a dramatic impact on the region – including Israel. It was counterintuitive that a former Sunni jihadist organisation like HTS would lead with the outreach to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds, yet it happened. And while the complete hollowness of the regime was the main secret to the rapid success of the revolution, the other crucial ingredient was precisely this non-sectarian element; the descent into sectarianism, deliberately fostered by the Assad regime, was a crucial cause of the failure last time.

Israel’s bluster about being “the only democracy in the region,” while an obvious nonsense in relation to its subjected Palestinian population, holds some truth regarding the Israeli population. By being able to point at ugly dictatorships in the Arab and neighbouring Muslim world, Israeli leaders promote the idea that their anti-Israel agendas are the work of evil tyrants who want to drive out Jews. The fact that many are also run on a sectarian basis – including those are democratic such as Lebanon – further mirrors and is used to further justify Israel’s own racist, sectarian system.

The Arab Spring was the first region-wide attempt at democratic revolution, which however was largely destroyed. In 2019 there was a second round, in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Algeria. What was very pronounced in the first three in particular was their specifically anti-sectarian content. In both Iraq and Lebanon, the movements against sectarian rule were put down, in Iraq brutally crushed by the ‘axis of resistance’ Shiite militia at a cost of hundreds of lives, while in Lebanon Hezbollah also used violence against the movement, thereby saving the rule of all the sectarian elites; in Sudan the democratic opening was overthrown by the military; a few years later, we also saw the Iranian regime crush its own ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement. All of this made the region safer for Israel’s own racist, sectarian project.

By contrast, the victory of democratic, non-sectarian forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and elsewhere would have represented a far larger political challenge to Zionism than harsh but hollow words from ugly regimes, which only facilitate Zionist siege ideology.

It may well be a struggle for the Syrian revolution to maintain the course; the mobilised Syrian revolutionary population will need to fight all attempts to restrict democratic space or to stir sectarianism tooth and nail. But if their struggle does succeed, a democratic, non-sectarian Syria could likewise have an electrifying regional impact.

Israel is trying its hardest to make sure it does not succeed.