Israel seizes chaos in Syria to attack military assets

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

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

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

They included fighter jets, radars and air defense sites, and naval vessels, as well as weapons stockpiles, the IDF said.

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

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

Katz said he had told the army to “establish a sterile defense zone free of weapons and terrorist threats in southern Syria, with no permanent Israeli presence.”

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

“It did not strip the Syrian army of only specific capabilities, it sent it back to the starting line, without any significant strategic capabilities,” Yoav Limor wrote in the Israel Hayom newspaper.

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

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

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

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

“The territory ensures strategic control over the entire arena in southern Syria, which poses an immediate threat to Israel,” the Ynet news website quoted Kobi Michael, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, as saying. (INSS) of Israel. “There is no vantage point higher than the Syrian side of the Golan.”

Officials stress that Israel has acted in its own national security interests after the collapse of the Assad regime.

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

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

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

Under Bashar al-Assad, Syria was a major regional military power. Israel had attacked it in recent years in hundreds of strikes that were rarely openly acknowledged. Israel’s calculation included a sphere of denial for itself, but also for Assad, because it felt no obligation to respond.

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

Israel avoided major attacks that could have led to a wider war and sought to avoid conflict with Russia, after it became Assad’s biggest backer in recent years.

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

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

UN peacekeepers remain in the buffer zone established on Syrian territory after the 1973 Middle East war and have stressed that by moving its ground forces, Israel is now violating the accord stop the fire that established it.

Israeli officials argue that the ceasefire agreement has collapsed since the other side of the agreement ceased to exist, and that its moves are temporary and limited to self-defense .

A UN peacekeeping spokesman said peacekeepers “were unable to move freely within the buffer zone following recent events,” adding that it was “imperative that peacekeepers from the UN could carry out its tasks without hindrance”.

“We are against this type of attack. I think this is a turning point for Syria. It should not be used by its neighbors to invade Syrian territory,” said the UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.

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

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

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

The US has urged Israel to ensure its incursion is “temporary”.

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

Several media outlets highlight the potential danger posed by Syria’s new Islamist leaders, with HTS still widely designated as a terrorist organization.

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

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

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