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Israel doesn’t want Syrian forces at ‘deconfliction line’
Haid Haid, consulting fellow at Chatham House, says Israel’s attack on Damascus is “not a complete surprise,” but targeting the Defence Ministry and the presidential palace is an escalation not seen before.
“Israel has been quite clear since the fall of the [Bashar al-Assad] regime in December that they don’t want the forces affiliated with the new state in Syria to be deployed to the deconfliction line in southern Syria. And they have been trying to use different tactics in order to advance that objective,” Haid told Al Jazeera.
One way Israel is trying to advance that plan is to present itself as the “protectors” of the Druze community, Haid said.
Syria is currently not in a position to retaliate against the attacks, he added, noting that when the interim government came to power, it said it wouldn’t “cause trouble for any of the actors in the region”, and would instead focus on domestic issues.
Israeli soldiers patrol the dividing line between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria
Netanyahu needs war to appease coalition, disrupt corruption trial: Analyst
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is “infatuated” with his wartime role and “wants to maintain and perpetuate an atmosphere of war” for his political survival, an analyst says.
“There’s Gaza, there’s no ceasefire, there’s Iran… Now there is Syria in the background,” said columnist and former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas. Fighting a war on many fronts also helps appease far-right members of his coalition and adds another disruption to his ongoing corruption trial.
“Today he was testifying and asked the judges, which they agreed to, to suspend the trial because he had important national security issues to deal with,” Pinkas told Al Jazeera.
