Israeli experts, including a former government official, have questioned the rationale of the country's latest military intervention in Syria, warning it achieved little, risks a wider sectarian war and damages hopes of stability in Damascus.
Israel’s air strikes this week on Sweida in southern Syria, and the Defence Ministry building in central Damascus, followed days of violence between Druze, Bedouin tribes and pro-government forces that formed the latest challenge for President Ahmad Al Shara’s government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government justified its strikes on grounds that combine national security with protection of the Druze, a religious minority deeply embedded in both Syria and Israel, as well as Jordan and Lebanon.
But the escalation to military action was unnecessary, some Israelis believe.
“Israel could have sent appeasing messages to Ahmad Al Shara, drafting a list of mutually agreed upon understandings and even delineating red lines, rather than bomb for no apparent reason and attaining nothing,” Alon Pinkas, a chief of staff to multiple former Israeli foreign ministers, told The National.
The violence in Sweida began with skirmishes including an ambush by Bedouin gunmen on a truck and kidnappings by Druze militiamen. Syrian government forces intervened in an offensive in which more than 200 Druze, including civilians, have been killed.
Scores of Bedouins and government security forces have also been killed, and civil society organisations have accused all sides of atrocities, including killings, torture, and degrading treatment.
On Thursday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights monitoring group claimed a total of 594 people had been killed in the violence since Sunday.
According to Israeli military officials, their country's strikes were designed to send messages to Mr Al Shara’s government that Israel will act to defend a community that is kin to its own citizens.
The Druze, whose faith emerged from a branch of Islam in the 11th century, number around 150,000 people in Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Many serve in the Israeli military, as well as in the cabinet and parliament. There are around 800,000 Druze registered as living in Syria, mostly in the southern Sweida governorate, bordering Jordan.
“The Druze leaders approached the leaders in Israel to support the Druze in Syria and take a position to save them from this tragedy and this situation that they are in,” Col Hamada Ganem, a Druze and a former commander of the Israeli military’s Gaza Strip Northern Brigade, told The National.
“The goal here was to protect the Syrian Druze. There was no Israeli goal against the Syrian state.”
Mr Netanyahu's government gave the green light for military intervention after pressure from Israel's Druze population to act, and the desire to portray a show of force, observers said.
“In Israel, there are always domestic considerations, political considerations,” Professor Eyal Zisser, Vice Rector of Tel Aviv University and an expert on Syria, told The National. “The Druze community in Israel is putting pressure, on the one hand, and also, whenever you can show that you are strong, why not?”
Druze former Israeli military commander
Doubts over Al Shara
In interviews, Israeli officials and academics painted a picture of a deep uncertainty in the country over the willingness and ability of Mr Al Shara's government in Damascus to prevent violence or to enact the vision he claims to seek of an inclusive and stable Syria.
Colonel Ganem accused Mr Al Shara of both unwillingness and inability to protect Syria’s minorities.
“If he is a statesman, he must defend his people, especially the minorities – they are an indispensable part of Syria,” he said.
In a speech on Thursday, Mr Al Shara said the Druze were “a fundamental part of the fabric” of Syria, and rejected any attempt for them to be “dragged” into the hands of what he called “an external party”.
Syria’s government is, “keen on holding accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people”, he added.
Within Israel, some support and see the logic behind military intervention in Syria. Since the fall of the Bashar Al Assad regime last December, Israel has encroached on territory in a UN-controlled buffer in the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau recognised by most of the international community as Syrian territory. It has carried out air strikes against what it says were remnants of the former regime’s military infrastructure.
The presence of radical Islamist fighters in Syria’s new armed forces rings alarm bells for many Israelis. They include foreign militants, including ethnic Turkic Uighurs from the Turkistan Islamic Party, which aims to form an Islamic state in Central Asia.
Israel wants demilitarisation of southern Syria to prevent groups it sees as a national security threat replacing the Iran-aligned militias who once held positions there. The Tehran-backed groups fled with the fall of the Assad regime.
Search for stability
Others, while wary of the Syrian government’s lack of monopoly on force, raise concerns about the long-term impact of Israeli military intervention.
“Let's focus on the interests of everyone to have stability,” Prof Zisser said. “That's the basic thing, and such actions are against the idea of having stability.”
Israel's operations this week have sparked Syrian and international condemnation, and are widely seen as further destabilising an already fragile situation. The strikes killed and injured several civilians, said Federico Jachetti, the Norwegian Refugee Council's Syria country office director.
“The international community must make it clear that such actions are unacceptable, represent a violation of international law, and directly contribute to Syria’s instability,” he said.
Many Israelis caution against dragging the country into another war in Syria, or of exacerbating tensions within and between sects, when violations have been committed on all sides.
Israeli expert on Syria
Hikmat Al Hijri, the main figure in a triumvirate that constitutes the Druze spiritual leadership, earlier this week called for “international protection” from “all countries”. Other Druze leaders have cautioned against such moves, fearing that it may undermine integration.
“There absolutely was a massacre, but it was not just a Druze massacre,” Dr Nir Boms, director of the Syria Forum at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Centre, told The National, of this week’s violence. “I don't think we need to be on the side of anyone committing violations. I think we need to do everything we can to stop this.”
While maintaining that Israel's intervention saved Druze lives in Syria, he cautioned against more warfare.
“I think Israel saved Druze lives with what it did,” Mr Boms added. “But I don't want to put Israel in the middle of a Syrian sectarian war. For heaven's sake, we have enough wars of our own.”
Netanyahu's politics
Some go further, believing that Israel’s intentions in Syria are less related to security and more to Mr Netanyahu’s desire to stay in power.
“Netanyahu is infatuated with his ‘wartime prime ministership’ and believes that perpetuating the war − Gaza, Houthis, Iran and now Syria − shields him politically,” Mr Pinkas said. “He deludes himself that he is actually remodelling the Middle East landscape solely through the use of military power.”
Rather than manoeuvring among sects in Syria, Israel needs to support Mr Al Shara’s stated aims to build an inclusive state that works for all its citizens, Mr Boms added.
“Israel actually has a vast interest in Ahmad Al Shara succeeding,” he said. “A Syria that will be able to make peace from the inside will make peace from the outside.”
Israel and the US have said they want Syria to join the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements that established diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab-majority countries. But such a move may face significant popular opposition, given the Israeli attacks on Syria in the past seven months.
US pressure on Israel is the most likely deterrent to stop further military action in Syria, as President Donald Trump has lifted sanctions and appears charmed by Mr Al Shara, Prof Zisser said.
“Netanyahu does whatever Trump tells him to do,” he said. “So, if this is an American dictate, it will happen.”
Mr Netanyahu on Thursday framed the Israeli strikes as the catalyst for a ceasefire in Sweida. The cessation in hostilities came after US pressure for the fighting to end.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington had communicated with “all parties” involved in the clashes in Syria and “agreed on specific steps” to halt the violence. “This will require all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made and this is what we fully expect them to do,” he wrote on X.
For now, the future relationship between Israel and Syria remains unclear. One option is the return to a 1974 agreement between the two nations that saw the creation of a UN-patrolled buffer zone between armistice lines on the Golan Heights. But a complication is Israel’s occupation of territory within that separation zone since the Assad regime fell.
“This government will not do it,” Mr Pinkas said. “But before anything can be considered it remains to be seen how Al Shara consolidates power and extends sovereignty. Only then will Israel conceivably return to the 1974 armistice lines.”
