Testing Israel’s Limits

 

By James M. Dorsey

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US-mediated talks between Israel and Syria serve as a bellwether for the extent to which Israel can reshape the Middle East and impose its will on the region. They also are likely to indicate the degree to which US and Israeli interests diverge in Syria.

Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a confidante of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, focussed this week on security arrangements in southern Syria in a round of talks in Paris chaired by Tom Barrack, the US Ambassador to Turkey and the Trump administration's Syria envoy.

The talks were the highest-level meeting between officials of the two countries in 25 years and the first since the latest clashes in the southern Syrian city of As-Suwayda between the country’s Druze minority, Bedouin militias, and Syrian security forces, and Israel’s bombing of Syrian military targets, including the defence ministry, in the capital Damascus.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the clashes’ death toll at 1,399 people, 196 of whom were summarily executed.

Mr. Netanyahu dispatched Mr. Dermer to Paris following several meetings in Azerbaijan between Mr. Al-Shaibani and the prime minister’s national security advisor, Tzachi Hangebi, that fuelled Israeli and US hopes that security arrangements could be a first step toward Syrian recognition of Israel.

The Paris talks are likely to establish whether Israel can dictate to President Ahmed al-Sharaa where in Syria his military can operate and the degree to which Israel can successfully project itself as the protector of Syrian minorities, such as the Druze, a secretive monotheistic group based In Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, and the Kurds in the north.

Ultra-conservative Sunni Muslims accuse the Druze of being heretics.

Israeli Druze serve in the Israeli military as well as Israel’s foreign service, often rising to prominent positions.

Unlike US President Donald J. Trump, the European Union, and Britain, Israel is sceptical of Mr. Al-Sharaa’s assertions that he has shed his jihadist past, including an association with Al Qaeda during Syria’s more than a decade-long civil war.

Since toppling President Bashar al-Assad last December and coming to office, Mr. Al-Sharaa has repeatedly said he was not seeking conflict with Israel and would not allow militants to attack Israel from Syrian soil.

The clashes in As-Suwayda, as well as violence in March in coastal areas that are home to the Alawites, the Muslim sect to which Mr. Al-Assad belongs, have cast doubt on Mr. Al-Sharaa’s ability to rein in militants.

So has the incorporation into the Syrian military of foreign fighters who fought the Al-Assad regime alongside Mr. Al-Sharaa and others.

In contrast to Israel, the US, Europe, and Britain, despite misgivings, have endorsed Mr. Al Sharaa. Egged on by NATO ally Turkey and several Gulf states, they have lifted or suspended sanctions against Syria, and, in the case of the United States, removed the Syrian leader from its list of designated terrorists.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar have since seized the opportunity by the horns. A high-powered Saudi business delegation signed 47 investment agreements valued at US$S6 billion during a visit to Damascus this week.

Mr. Trump highlighted the divergence in US and Israeli policy towards Syria when he, earlier this year, rejected Mr. Netanyahu’s request to commit to keeping some 2,000 US troops in northern Syria and suggested that he could resolve any problems between the prime minister and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Last week’s Israeli strikes followed hundreds of Israeli attacks in the wake of the toppling of Mr. Al-Assad, aimed as much at decimating the Syrian military’s infrastructure and weaponry as countering Turkish influence in Syria.

Israeli officials, including Mr. Netanyahu, see Turkey’s military presence in northern Syria as a national security threat and have warned Syria not to grant Turkey control of its airspace in the north.

Thousands of Turkish troops control a buffer zone in Syria just across the country’s border with Turkey to counter the influence of Syrian Kurdish forces aligned with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The PKK recently ended its four-decade-long insurgency in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey that killed tens of thousands, and began to disarm.

The majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) served as the US ‘s ground forces in the fight against the Islamic State. The Trump administration has since urged the group to work with Mr. Al-Sharaa’s government.

Israeli officials and conservative analysts allege Turkey and Mr. Al-Sharaa, supported by the Gulf states, are striving to turn Syria, a mosaic of religious and ethnic minorities, into a Sunni Muslim state.

They characterise violence against minorities as a “jihad’ that serves the purpose.

“The interim government in Damascus, led by former jihadist Ahmed al-Shara, reflects Erdogan’s vision of a future Syria rooted in a narrow, exclusionary interpretation of Sunni Islam. This vision’s logical conclusion can be seen in the atrocities against Syria’s Druze minority in Suwayda … The logic behind this brutality is chillingly simple: the perpetrators see their actions as a form of jihad,” said Sinan Ciddi, a senior fellow at the Washington-based pro-Israel Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD).

Sunnis constitute the largest religious group in Syria, accounting for roughly 70 per cent of the population. For more than half a century they were ruled by ousted Mr. Al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, who were Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam.

The US and Turkish backing of Mr. Al-Sharaa’s emphasis on a unified, rather than a federated Syria, and Israel’s push for minority autonomy, if not a break-up of the Syrian state, put the United States and Israel at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

“The discussions these past months with Kurdish and Druze representatives about the integration of their areas under a centralized system controlled by Damascus illustrate the difficulty to find a governance model that balances power sharing, inclusion of all communities, and unity of the country,” said Syria scholar Marie Forestier.

In parallel with the Syrian Israeli talks, stalled negotiations between Mr. Al-Sharaa’s government and the Kurds have gained new urgency in the wake of the As-Suwayda violence.

The talks are stalled on the Forces’ refusal to disband and integrate into the Syrian military as individuals rather than as a unified unit.

In Paris, Mr. Al-Shaibani, together with Mr. Barrack, met French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, after which the Syrian foreign ministry pledged in a statement “to continue consultations between the Syrian government and the SDF…as soon as possible.”

Even so, Mr. Al-Shaibani cancelled his scheduled meeting in Paris with Mazloum Kobane because the SDF commander refused to budge on his demands.

A Syrian official insisted that “any consideration of refusing to relinquish arms or insisting on the formation of a separate military bloc is unequivocally rejected.” It would be "incompatible with the principles of building a unified national army,” and would violate Islamic law, the official added.

To pressure the Kurds, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan this week warned that Turkey would view any attempt to divide Syria as a national security threat and would intervene.

“We are warning: No group should take steps aimed at dividing” Syria, Mr. Fidan said in the strongest veiled threat to the Kurds since the fall of Mr. Al-Assad.

Earlier this year, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel had given unspecified “positive guarantees to the rights of the Kurds.”  Mr. Saar described the Kurds as Israel’s “natural allies.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, said this week that the administration had advised Syrian minorities that it does not support demands for autonomy. Like Turkey and contrary to Israel, Mr. Gorka suggested the administration wanted to see a unified, not a federated Syria.

“Come to the table, because this is your shot. Get in on that deal, because it’s the only time it’s going to happen.” Mr. Gorka said, addressing the minorities.

In the short term, he said, the administration wants to ensure that minorities can defend themselves and to “make sure the state sees an end to the massacre of whichever confessional community.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that Mr. Trump was not happy about Israel’s recent strikes in support of the Druze.

Ms. Leavitt said Mr. Trump had been “caught off guard” by the Israeli strikes in Damascus and had “quickly called the (Israeli) prime minister to rectify those situations.”

It was unclear whether Mr. Gorka’s warning constituted an implicit endorsement of the Israeli intervention, which would be at odds with Mr. Trump’s sentiment.

Israel’s weakening of the Syrian military was also intended to enforce its unilateral ban on the military’s operations in southern Syria in line with the Jewish state’s military strategy in the wake of Hamas’s October 7,2023, attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people. The updated strategy seeks to emasculate rather than deter its perceived foes militarily.

Well-placed sources said Mr. Al-Shaibani had rejected the Israeli demands during the Paris talks as he did in his earlier conversations with Mr. Netanyahu’s national security advisor, Mr.  Hanegbi in Azerbaijan.

Posting on X, Mr. Barrack put a positive spin on the Paris talks. “Our goal was dialogue and de-escalation, and we accomplished precisely that. All parties reiterated their commitment to continuing these efforts, Mr. Barrack said.

The Syrian Observatory reported that Mr. Al-Shaibani, despite rejecting the principle of an Israeli dictate, had agreed to a pullout of government troops and Bedouin militias from as-Suwayda, and US and United Nations oversight.

Mr. Al-Shaibani reportedly also agreed to the demilitarisation of the towns of Quneitra and Daraa that border the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, conquered during the 1967 Middle East war, and the creation of local Druze security committees that would be allowed to bear light arms.

An Israeli military source said, “The understandings reached through the mediation of Ambassador Barrack are a significant Israeli and Druze achievement. The Druze are in control of their fate, the central government will not be responsible for their security, and this is a good start."

Another Israeli military officer described the Bedouin killings in As-Suwayda as "the October 7 of the Druze."

"There's an attempt here to annihilate a sect, based on the lie of heresy against Islam. It's no coincidence that the commanders and clerics of the terrorists handed out razors before the attack for shaving off the Druze's moustaches and humiliating them," the officer said.

Celeng Omer, a pro-Israel Syrian Kurd, asserted that “the IDF's (Israel Defence Forces) intervention, at the request of the Druze community in Israel, played a decisive role in preventing a potential ethnic cleansing in the Mount of Druze in Suwayda. The (Israeli) airstrikes…curbed the advance of the attacking groups and sent a firm message to Al-Julani that he would pay a heavy price unless he halted his militants' offensive on Suwayda and withdrew them.”

“This proves that extremist Islamists respond only to a language of firmness coupled with force, as clearly demonstrated by the recent operations of the IDF,” Mr. Omer added in a commentary published by the Washington-based, far-right, pro-Israel Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Mr. Omer was referring to Mr. Al-Sharaa by his jihadist era nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

Mr. Omer was referring to Mr. Al-Sharaa by his jihadist era nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

Syria scholar Danny Makki and journalist Angela Alsahwi’s description of As-Suwayda in the wake of the clashes seemingly bears out the Israeli military officer’s description of the clashes.

“The first thing that hits you is the smell. Rotting flesh lingers in the thick, summer air. Ten days of deadly clashes have left thousands dead and the city of Suwayda fractured — scarred by blood, fire, and revenge,” Mr. Makki and Ms. Alsahwi said.

They added that “in the heart of the city, the National Hospital stands as a symbol of the carnage. The blood on its floors has only now begun to dry, and the stench of death clings to every corridor. Piles of bodies, some nameless, were only recently buried.”

The Israeli intervention on behalf of the Druze was backed by Israeli Druze and a segment of the Syrian Druze community headed by Hikmat al-Hijri, who called for international support, warning that the minority faced a "total war of extermination."

Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh, an Israeli Druze journalist, politician, and first-ever non-Jewish representative of a Zionist organisation in Washington, warned, “We are dealing with Islamists who are trying to force Syria’s minorities to accept Islam. Some of these people come from Afghanistan or Chechnya; they don’t even speak Arabic.”

To take Syria back from the brink, Mr. Al-Sharaa will have to convince his country’s fractured minorities and foreign powers, including Israel, Turkey, Iran, the United States, and Europe, that he is sincere in his insistence on inclusivity and that he can rein in Syria’s disparate militant groups. So far, his measures constitute, at best, a chequered first step.

Israeli and Turkish intervention, aimed at advancing geopolitical designs, rather than take minorities’ best interests into account, complicate, if not undermine, Mr. Al-Sharaa’s ability to strike a balance that ensures Syria’s existence as a nation state.

For Mr. Al-Sharaa to succeed, the United States would have to position itself as a neutral arbitrator. That would have to entail pressure on Israel to respond constructively in non-military ways to demands by its Druze constituency.

For Mr. Al-Sharaa to succeed, the United States would have to position itself as a neutral arbitrator. That would have to entail pressure on Israel to respond constructively in non-military ways to demands by its Druze constituency.

That may be a tall order for a US administration that vacillates between differentiating US and Israeli interests and seeing them as overlapping.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.