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A look back at Israel’s military campaign against Syria in December
In light of the latest events in Damascus, as well as the southern city of Suwayda, let’s take a look back at December, when Israel launched hundreds of attacks across Syria:
- In the days following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on December 8, the Israeli military launched a military campaign that pummeled Syria with more than 600 strikes, including attacks on air defence systems and missile depots in Damascus.
- The campaign to cripple Syria’s military also targeted Tartous, home to Syria’s naval forces.
- In parallel, Israeli troops entered a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, violating a 1974 armistice agreement and destroying roads, power lines and water networks in the southeastern Quneitra region after people refused to follow their orders to evacuate.
- At the time, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office also announced plans to increase the number of settlers in the Golan Heights, which it has illegally occupied since 1967.
‘No clear objectives’ to Israel’s strikes on Syria
Ammar Kahf, executive director of Omran Center for Strategic Studies, says Israel is seeking to cause “havoc and chaos” in Syria to destabilise the new government after its major bombardment.
“It refuses the right of the central government to control all areas, and it continues to want to impose its own rule [in Syria]. There are rumours now of an additional land incursion and more conditions placed on Damascus,” Kahf told Al Jazeera.
He said Israel is not acting with “an endgame” when it comes to the regional conflicts it’s engaged in.
“No one really knows the end result; there is no logic to this. There are no clear objectives of this operation. The puzzling part is the Syrian government has shown a tremendous amount of self-restraint during the past nine months on the incursions, the occupation, and all the attacks by the Israelis.”
Israel’s main goal has been to ‘divide and weaken Syria’
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara has called the Israeli attacks in Syria “vulgar exhibitionism”, saying Israel is “once again trying to prove to all its neighbours that it is the new regional hegemon”.
Bishara said that Israel, which is supported by the US, has been able to bomb Beirut, Damascus, Tehran and Sanaa, and feels it is capable of dictating policy in the Middle East.
Israel’s “main goal has been to divide and weaken Syria, turn its minorities, whether they are Druze or Kurds or Alawites, against the central government in Damascus”, he said.
It is also a way for Israel to deflect from its genocide in Gaza by bombing Syria, Bishara noted, adding the attacks in Syria are “yet another Israeli aggression in a neighbouring country”.
He also said the Israeli government will say the attacks are “to protect the minorities in Syria – in this case, the Druze”.
Bishara added, “Since the 1950s, Israel has pretended to be the protector of minorities, like the French colonialists … like the American imperialists, the British … every foreign power comes to the region, and they want to be protectors of minorities to weaken countries in the region to impose their will, and here we have it again.”
