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SvennoJ on 16 July 2025
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Main events on July 16th

  • Israel’s relentless attacks continued across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 80 Palestinians since dawn, with UN officials warning of a fast-deteriorating humanitarian situation unfolding because of the war and blockade.
  • Israel struck multiple sites in the heart of Damascus as it warned the Syrian government it would escalate attacks if its troops did not withdraw from Suwayda in southern Syria.
  • After the series of air strikes, the Syrian government announced a new ceasefire in Suwayda, but it’s unclear if it will hold after a previous one quickly disintegrated.
  • US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the various parties involved in fighting in Syria had agreed on “specific steps” to end the clashes there.
  • At least 25 people at a Gaza food distribution site die in a stampede after tear gas was fired near the controversial US- and Israeli-backed GHF.

Syria’s leader: ‘Illegal actions cannot be accepted’

Videos have surfaced on social media of government-affiliated fighters forcibly shaving the moustaches of Druze sheikhs and stepping on Druze flags and pictures of religious clerics.

Other videos showed Druze fighters beating captured government troops and posing by their bodies. Reporters in the area saw burned and looted houses.

Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued a statement condemning the violations and promising that perpetrators would be punished. “These criminal and illegal actions cannot be accepted under any circumstances, and completely contradict the principles that the Syrian state is built on,” said al-Sharaa.

Israel would choose ‘chaos and weakness’ rather than a ‘coherent threat’ in Syria

Israel’s attacks in Syria are an “extreme step beyond making a point”, says Glenn Carle, a former US deputy national intelligence officer.

Carle said he could “understand the Israeli concern about having hostile groups right along its border, that it has just, in over two years, substantially reduced the threat from”. However, “destroying the Ministry of Defence of a very weak government strikes me as using a sledgehammer when possibly a strong statement might have been more effective”.

Carle said Israel prefers a dysfunctional Syria with “a group of factions squabbling among itself but not posing a security threat to Israel”. “They would choose chaos and weakness to dealing with a coherent threat,” he told Al Jazeera.