Israel’s strike on Syria wasn’t altruistic, it was strategic

Israel’s military strikes against Ahmed al-Sharaa – also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani’s – Syrian regime, hitting the defence ministry headquarters and presidential palace in Damascus, represents the most severe Israeli military response to Syria’s regime in decades, including the 50-year rule of the Assad family dictatorship. But Israel’s unprecedented military strikes aren’t without context.

The massacre of civilians in the Druze town of Suwayda and the subsequent United States-brokered ceasefire provides a moment for reflection. This so-called “sectarian violence” as it is known in the West, is, more accurately, an ongoing jihad by Marxism-influenced Islamist warriors committing atrocities, they claim, in the name of Islam and the prophet Muhammed.

Their vigilante violence owes more to Marxism and power than it does to Islam as understood by the religious authorities in today’s Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. That is the faultline of the Middle East today and what Al-Sharaa chooses for Syria will determine his future.

Hamas reminded us of jihad’s agenda in the Iran regime-sanctioned, supplied, and underwritten invasion and mass murder in Israel on 7 October 2023. But Israel’s unprecedented air attacks against Syrian regime-affiliated jihadists and its direct on-the-ground military and humanitarian assistance to the Druze in southern Syria’s Suwayda draws a new line in the sand of the Middle East.

Israel, as the region’s “strong horse”, is setting a new post-7 October standard of response and more consequentially, preventing jihadis’ deadly regional agenda. No less important, Israel has conveyed a message of the Jewish state’s reliability in its act of protection of its 170 000 Israeli Druze minority.

Syrian Druze have been assaulted by Sunni Bedouin tribe massacres supported by Islamic operatives of the Syrian regime. Historical tensions between the Druze and Syria’s Sunni Arab majority, worsened by Druze modus vivendi with the Assad regime, have led to revenge attacks by Sunni groups like HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) a Sunni Islamist militant group formerly linked to al-Qaeda. This group aims to establish an Islamic state in Syria after Assad’s fall, prompting Israeli military intervention to protect the Druze and maintain a jihadist-free buffer zone.

Israel’s negotiations with Syria for security arrangements are complicated by its airstrikes defending the Druze, which risk collapsing the new non-belligerence of Syria’s new leadership.

Israel’s tough response is also a reflection of its own history of genocide which has only strengthened its resolve to prevent acts of mass murder on fellow minorities.

The border threat

The catalyst for Israel’s action wasn’t the Suwayda violence alone, but what it could trigger on Israel’s border. The issue is both the prevention of Syrian based terror groups streaming southward toward the Israeli border, and hundreds from Israel’s Druze community from storming the northern border fence and crossing into Syria, creating a potentially catastrophic security crisis.

This was a mass breach of one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders, with Israeli citizens placing themselves in an active conflict zone. The spectre of Israeli Druze being killed or kidnapped in Syria while Israeli forces watched represents precisely a scenario that governments cannot survive politically.

Israel’s response also reflects its evolving national security doctrine of prevention following the 7 October Hamas massacre. The new doctrine is “stability and peace through strength”, sometimes requiring striking first, striking hard, and managing diplomatic consequences later.

Dr Michael Doran, the former White House security official, reminds us to be wary of falling into Tehran’s trap. He notes that Al-Sharaa travelled to Baku Azerbaijan and met Israeli officials there, which casts doubt that Al-Sharaa would provoke Israel over an orchestrated attack against the Syrian Druze. Doran’s analysis points to familiar Iranian-regime tactics: while Al-Sharaa’s trip to Baku was a consequential setback for Iran, “Tehran is pushing back by turning its enemies against each other.”

The same lesson applies to the 7 October Hamas massacre. Saudi Arabia and Israel were normalising relations, Turkey and Israel mending ties. A coherent, US-led regional bloc was forming: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Turkey; Israel. Then came 7 October, driving a wedge between Jerusalem, Ankara, and Riyadh. Iranian operatives and former Assad commanders remain active throughout Syria. Asked Doran, “Is Jerusalem certain Al-Sharaa ordered the Druze attacks?”

Has it ruled out Iranian manipulation designed to sabotage emerging Syrian-Israeli co-operation? Doran’s strategic warning is stark: “A policy that holds Al-Sharaa responsible for forces he doesn’t control won’t strengthen him, but rather weaken him. In practice, it becomes a tacit, perhaps unwitting vote for a disintegrated Syria. But a disintegrated Syria serves Iran more than it serves Israel. And it won’t help with Turkey either.”

Threat of overreaction

Israel’s requirement of defensible borders necessitates deep buffer zones throughout southern Syria up to Damascus, enforcing demilitarisation. Netanyahu reiterated on 17 July that Israel would occupy and enforce a buffer zone in southern Syria indefinitely, not conditionally.

At the same time, Israel must avoid repeating its costly occupation of Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. Israel’s lessons learned in Lebanon, with Hezbollah ultimately sitting on Israel’s northern border, is instructive.

The Trump administration had made high-risk gestures to Syria’s leadership – lifting crippling sanctions; extending international recognition; embracing Al-Sharaa as a regional partner. But at what point does the US recognise that carrots alone are insufficient when dealing with ideologically driven movements?

The Suwayda barbarity – systematic executions; torture; and sectarian violence – mirrors patterns across the Islamic world. Was this remarkably different from 7 October? From Muslim persecution of Hindus in Gujarat; Christians in Pakistan and Nigeria; minorities in Somalia and Sudan? The uncomfortable truth Western policymakers struggle to acknowledge is that many Islamist movements – Sunni, Shia, or derivatives – share a fundamental goal of eliminating or subjugating non-Muslim “infidels”. This is a theological imperative, not a political grievance resolvable through diplomatic accommodation.

The test of Islamist moderation isn’t what leaders say in Washington, but how they treat religious minorities when no-one is watching.

Israel’s response conveys a message. It declares to the Middle East that Israel, as a regional minority itself, will not countenance mass murder against minorities scattered across the region. This isn’t altruism, it’s strategic necessity. In a region where today’s ally becomes tomorrow’s genocidal enemy, Israel’s security depends on establishing clear red lines around minority persecution.

Syria’s new government faces a definitive test. Can it protect all its faiths, sects, and ethnic groups, or will it prove another iteration of Islamist authoritarian rule masked by Western amenable diplomatic respectability?

This is a fateful moment for Al-Sharaa’s fledgling regime. The US-brokered ceasefire may prove a temporary respite. Trump has risked personal political, diplomatic, and security capital. If Al-Sharaa can prevent future massacres and hold perpetrators accountable, he may prove worthy of diplomatic investment.

But if ideologically fuelled violence continues, if minorities remain vulnerable while Damascus offers assurances, the West may need to acknowledge a harder truth: nominal radical movements cannot be reformed, only contained.

Israel, too, faces a test. It must strike a new balance between enforcing its new national security policy of no tolerance, early prevention of jihad, while leveraging new opportunities for non-belligerence pacts and deeper regional alliances.

This requires that Israel lead as Washington’s key regional ally with a clear-eyed recognition of the difference between adversaries’ tactical moderation and strategic transformation. Recent events suggest Syria’s new leadership has yet to demonstrate the latter.

• Dr Dan Diker is the president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.