While Israel and other regional actors wait to see how events in Syria play out, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has already acted to destroy Syrian military capabilities and seize territory along the Golan Heights border, claiming its actions are defensive in nature.
Hundreds of Israeli air strikes, dubbed operation Bashan Arrow, began shortly after rebel forces seized control of Damascus. The IDF says it destroyed roughly 80 per cent of the Syrian military’s assets within 48 hours, before the rebels could get their hands on them, and has continued its operations.
Targets hit, it says, included chemical weapons, research centres where advanced weapons were reportedly manufactured, combat planes, helicopter gunships, an array of missiles, drones, radar installations, munitions storehouses and arms production sites. Israel’s navy was also in action, reportedly destroying most, if not all, of the Syrian navy’s fleet.
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There was almost no opposition to the unprecedented waves of air strikes and, because almost all positions had been abandoned, there were very few casualties. Decades of painstaking intelligence-gathering paid off and the execution was precise, Israel believes.
For years the Assad family regime, more recently as part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”, had been Israel’s bitterest enemy. Now, within a matter of days, the military threat it posed was eliminated. Some Israeli military commentators went as far as to describe the operation as more impressive than Israel’s surprise attacks that destroyed Arab air forces at the start of the 1967 Six-Day War.
“We want relations with the new regime in Syria,” said prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. “But if the new regime in Syria allows Iran to re-entrench itself or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons to [Lebanese militant group] Hizbullah – we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price.”
After Israeli military spotters on the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the Six-Day War, noted that Syrian troops had deserted their positions, IDF tanks and infantry crossed the border into the buffer zone, seizing the former Syrian army outposts and taking up new forward positions along the Golan demarcation line from the snow-covered Mount Hermon in the north, which has a commanding position overlooking Syria, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan, to the points where the borders of Israel, Syria and Jordan meet in the south.
Netanyahu informed the US that IDF forces would remain in the buffer zone “until a force capable of enforcing the separation agreement [which followed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war] is established”. Israel described the military manoeuvre as temporary, but temporary in this region tends to become permanent. Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank is a case in point.
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IDF troops are expected to remain in the newly occupied areas at least throughout the winter. Bulldozers are digging huge ditches to block vehicles approaching the border and are opening new roads ahead of the winter snows. The troops have been tasked with guarding, patrolling and laying ambushes to deter militant gunmen approaching the border.
Syrian rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said his forces were not in conflict with Israel and were not in a position to wage a campaign against it. He urged the United Nations to stop the Israeli attacks and ensure a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Syrian territory. “Israel intended to enter Syria under the pretext of the Iranian presence, but now there are no more excuses for foreign interference in Syria after the Iranians’ departure,” he said.
There is also mounting international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the demilitarised zone. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, stated: “The regional powers do not want Syria to descend into chaos.”
Another issue of concern for Israel is the freedom of its planes to operate in Syrian skies. Israel has carried out scores of strikes against Hizbullah and pro-Iranian militia forces in Syria in recent years in co-ordination with Russian command at the Khmeimim airbase. But the future of the Russian air force presence in Syria is now in doubt and, while Israel’s need for such operational freedom might diminish significantly with the departure of Iranian forces and Hizbullah in Syria, Israel remains sceptical of the new Syrian government’s ability to block weapons transfers from Syria to Lebanon.
Israel’s failure on the morning of the Hamas-led attack of October 7th, 2023, marked an unprecedented low point for the Israeli military and intelligence community. But the events over the last few months, beginning with the surprise pager attack on Hizbullah military commanders across Lebanon in September, have restored Israel’s position as the region’s pre-eminent military force.
Hamas and Hizbullah have been defeated, a ceasefire in Lebanon is being implemented, Iran’s air defences have been laid bare and the Assad regime has been toppled, ending Tehran’s regional “wall of fire” and the land bridge between Iran and Lebanon.
A ceasefire in Gaza before Donald Trump returns to the White House in January appears possible. Whether Israel, under its current leadership, is capable of pivoting these military achievements into making the Middle Easta safer place is another matter.
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