Guest esssay by Mitchell Plitnick, in The Multiplural World, Dec 14, 2024
(Mitchell Plitnick is a columnist at the online journal Mondoweiss, where this essay first appeared on December 13, 2024. Further below is a related interview on the overthrow of (coup against) the Syrian government and two related essays.)
Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad and his departure from the country on December 7, Israel has carried out an unprovoked invasion of Syria with the support of the U.S. The goals are clear: take strategic land, render Syria defenseless for the future, and redraw the political map of the Middle East.
Even as Bashar al-Assad was scrambling to get out of Syria, Israel was mobilizing its military to take advantage of the power vacuum that Assad’s ouster had created. After five decades of a low-level conflict between the two countries, Israel saw an opportunity to change the calculus, and it seized it.
As of December 11, Israel warplanes and missiles had struck Syria nearly 500 times. The goal of these attacks has been to destroy Syria’s military capability, and they have already succeeded. Reports by Israeli media claim that well over 80% of Syria’s weaponry, ships, missiles, aircraft, and other military supplies have been damaged or destroyed. In essence, Israel has rendered Syria completely defenseless.
Meanwhile, Israel has seized the de-militarized zone between it and Syria that was established in 1974. Israel military forces have taken the remainder of the Golan Heights, particularly the strategic Mount Hermon. Israel has coveted the mount because it is the highest point in the area and an ideal place for surveillance of both Syria and Lebanon.
Too few are calling this what it is: an invasion; nay, an unprovoked invasion. There has been virtually no pushback from any sector in Israel against this blatantly criminal act. That isn’t surprising, as even the Israeli ‘left’ can be expected to support the dubious “security” justification offered for the act.
What is more troubling is the insufficient pushback from other countries. Many Arab states have condemned Israel’s actions, some even calling it a land grab. France has condemned it as well and called on Israel to withdraw. Germany offered a rather tepid warning. But where are the calls for sanctions, for freezing trade deals, and, especially, for freezing weapons sales to Israel as it invades another sovereign state? Indeed, where is the word “invasion” in much of the rhetoric being spoken?
Unsurprisingly, the United States has called this blatant and wholly unprovoked aggression an “act of self-defense” by Israel. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that “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 with the genocide in Gaza, even where there is an appearance of sharp criticism of Israel, there are no threats of consequences. That’s true for the United States and it’s also true for the Arab states that have some means to impose consequences on Israel: Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. But none of those have even hinted they might consider severing their relations with Israel.
Ironically, the one Muslim country that did sever relations with Israel over the genocide in Gaza was Turkey. It is a U.S. ally that is illegally invading Syria in the wake of Assad’s fall. Before that, it armed, trained and assisted the mix of foreign and Syrian ‘rebels’ who have helped to spearhead Turkey’s military intervention. International law and norms of international relations simply don’t exist anymore, not even to the feeble extent they did once.
Given that it is already clear that no one is going to stop Israel, we have to ask what Israel’s goals in Syria are.
Israel’s initial strategic goals
Bashar al-Assad’s relationship with Israel was complicated. He often engaged in anti-Israel rhetoric, and his reliance on Hezbollah and Iran to maintain his political position created what was referred to as the ‘Shi’a Crescent’, which Israel saw as a means to of getting weapons from Iran into the hands of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. Thus, Israel frequently attacked Syrian sites in the name of targeting Iranian or Hezbollah forces. It did that so often that it was hardly reported, much less objected to anymore. It became completely normalized in Israel and Washington.
But Assad also prevented attacks on Israel emanating from Syrian territory. His government also maintained quiet in the de-militarized zone next to the Golan Heights. This may not seem strategically important, but for Israel—which had faced frequent attacks from Syria for the first 25 years of its existence—it was a big deal.
To Israel, Assad was no friend, but he was seen as preferable to likely alternatives. In Israel’s view, an embattled Assad, weakened but propped up in office, limited Syria as a strategic adversary to its being a land bridge between Iran and Lebanon. That is why, regardless of Israel’s support for covert CIA operations to support Syria’s rebels, Israel did not press for those rebels to be recruited, armed, and trained to a greater extent than they were, despite some in the U.S. pushing hard for regime change in Syria.
The 1974 Agreement on Disengagement froze the conflict between Israel and Syria that had reignited in the 1973 war. It created a de-militarized buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, most of which remained under illegal Israeli occupation. That agreement held until this week, a period of 50 years, which is quite remarkable when one considers all that has gone on in the region since. Israel broke it after the fall of Assad and his departure from Syria.
The Israeli claim that it was acting to keep the area secure after the Syrian army abandoned its posts there is laughable. The United Nations peacekeeping force, UNDOF (the UN Disengagement Observer Force) was still there, and there was no threat in the area.
Israel’s “legal” justification is even more absurd. Agreements are not made between regimes, nor between specific governments or rulers. They are made between states. Israel’s claim that the fall of Assad means that the Agreement on Disengagement is voided is not only wrong but also dangerous. By such rationale, any agreement between two countries is meaningless as soon as one government or the other changes.
This would imply, just to cite one odd example, that Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt is invalid as it was made with a previous government led by Anwar Sadat. Or when his successor, Hosni Mubarak, was deposed by a popular uprising in 2012, the peace treaty should have been voided at that time. It’s a crazy contention, and it is doubtful that Israel, much less the United States, would agree with it in that case. But Israel keeps a straight face when it applies it in Syria, and the U.S. backs it up.
Israel’s goal in invading the DMZ was to capture Mount Hermon, the highest point in Syria. It’s part of the mountain range that straddles the Syrian-Lebanese border, so it’s a strategically important site not only because it can conceal low-flying aircraft and some ground movement, but, more importantly, it is the ideal spot to spy on Damascus, a lot of the surrounding Syrian territory, and much of Lebanon. It’s a strategic prize Israel has desired ever since it agreed to withdraw to its side of the DMZ created.
Whatever territory Israel eventually agrees to relinquish, if it agrees to any at all, it will undoubtedly aim to keep Mount Hermon under occupation.
Remaking the Middle East
But Mount Hermon was only the beginning of Israel’s goals. For the Israeli far right, as represented by the notorious Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the ideology of ‘Greater Israel’ puts Israeli expansionism in a religious context. But for Israel’s secular majority, its designs are much more grounded in simple dominance, aiming at an unprecedented level of hegemony in the Middle East.
During testimony at his trial on Tuesday, December 10, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his view of the current regional situation clear, saying, “Something tectonic has happened here, an earthquake that hasn’t happened in the 100 years since the Sykes-Picot Agreement.” Plainly, Netanyahu sees this moment as an opportunity to redraw the entire political map of the Middle East.
This is the idea behind the hundreds of attacks Israel has launched at Syrian military targets. Israel argues that this is being done for “security reasons,” but there is no threat whatsoever now emanating from Syria. The U.S. has completely supported this argument, despite it being transparently untrue.
While Israel initially hinted it was targeting chemical weapons sites that still remained after Assad had been forced to destroy most of his stockpile, the massive bombardment quickly proved that the real goal was to completely destroy Syria’s ability to defend itself now and in the futre, as written above. So, now that Israel has succeeded in eliminating Syria’s military capabilities, what does it imply going forward?
One thing that is very clear is that Syria will be dependent for a long time on other countries for its self-defense. Israel has been instrumental over the years in supporting Arab rulers, even when they did not have friendly relations. The most well-known example was Israel’s aid to Jordan in fighting the PLO and perpetrating the ‘Black September’ massacre in 1970).
Given the way Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has been reaching out to the West and the way he has avoided speaking out against Israel’s invasion, it may well be that Israel sees itself as a potential “silent partner” supporting a new Syrian regime quietly, but brutally. This aligns well for Israel with Turkey’s activities in the north of Syria, where it is pressuring the U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and aligns well with Turkey’s support for HTS. While relations between Israel and Turkiye have again been severed, this time over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan is nothing if not a pragmatist when it comes to Israel and the Kurds. If he sees an opportunity to work with Israel to control a new Syria and make it less hospitable for Kurdish nationalism, he will leap at it.
What Netanyahu wants to avoid at all costs is a democratic and independent Syria. As with any Arab state, a state that reflects the will of its people is going to support the Palestinian cause. Not only is that undesirable in itself, but it would undermine the Israeli and Western narrative that depicts support for the Palestinian people as support for terrorism and authoritarianism.
Targeting Iran
Ultimately, Israel’s strategy, as always, centers on Iran. On Thursday, the Times of Israel reported, “…the (Israeli Air Force) said that after over a decade of evading air defenses over the skies of Syria during a campaign against Iran’s supply of weapons to Hezbollah, it had achieved total air superiority in the area. This air superiority over Syria could enable safer passage for IAF aircraft to carry out a strike on Iran, the military officials said.”
While the report does not necessarily indicate that an Israeli operation targeting Iranian nuclear sites is imminent, it reflects an Israeli belief, and likely an accurate one, that an Israeli attack on Iran that is sufficiently powerful and sustained to damage or destroy the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, many of which are deep underground, is much more feasible now.
Iran seems to have recognized this and is concerned. In recent weeks, it has responded to the Israeli military successes and to a resolution by France, Britain, Germany, and the U.S. saying that Tehran was not cooperating sufficiently with the IAEA by doing the one thing they can: increasing their enrichment of uranium. A recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) complaint warned that Iran was enriching to 60%, which is close to the 90% threshold needed for a nuclear warhead. This prompted the Europe 3/U.S. complaint.
On December 12, Iran accepted greater IAEA scrutiny of its nuclear facilities. While it is only one among several factors for Iran’s decision, it is certain that Tehran’s concern not to give Israel an excuse to launch an attack was one key reason for this reversal. This amounts to a regime of terror that Israel, with full backing from the United States and some of its European allies, is working to completely alter the face of the entire Middle East. A Syrian state that would rely on Western powers—which will inevitably mean Israel, even if covertly—for its security is a first step in that regard.
Doubtless, Israel has no real plan for how to succeed, but it is gambling on its ability to continue to live by the sword, with full American support.
Related analysis:
The dismemberment of Syria, interview with Laith Marouf (resident of Beirut, of Syrian and Palestinian origin), broadcast on ‘ReasonToResist’, interview program with host Dimitri Lascaris, broadcast on Dec 16, 2024 (87 minutes) [This is an informative interview, but the interview guest makes the unsubstantiated claim that the Russian government made a ‘deal’ (with whom or what?) to convince the Syrian government to surrender the country to the invading, jihadist forces backed by Turkey and welcomed by the Western powers. Surely the guest does not believe that the Russian government could have acted on its own in place of a Syrian government under Bashar-al-Assad which was making strategic decisions failing to defend the country. It is known, for example, that the Assad government declined proposals by Russia since 2016 (circa 2018) to improve the operational capacities of its armed forces as well as relations with the civilian population (and here), and it is well documented that the same government refused Russia’s urgings in 2016 and after to amend Syria’s constitution to grant autonomous political and cultural powers to Kurdish national forces. Neither of these past experiences are mentioned in the interview. The interview host adds his misguided view that the Russia government does not act on the world stage to defend other countries and peoples but, rather, acts only in narrow, national interests. Whatever happend to the global struggle for a multipolar world, an explicit goal of the Russian foreign policy for some years now?]
A decades-old plan by Israel to grab and occupy Syrian territory comes to life, analysis by Robert Inlakesh, published in Mint Press News, Dec 13, 2024 How the new ‘HTS’ rulers of Syria and their army could turn into a burden, interview with Syria analyst Kevork Almassian, bre-broadcast on his YouTube channel ‘Syriana Analysis’, Dec 13, 2024 (72 minutes)
How the West rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Abu Mohammed al-Jolani to be the leader of coup Syria, by Alan McLeod, Mint Press News, Dec 16, 2024
