On July 16, Israel brazenly launched airstrikes on key targets near the Syrian presidential palace, including the Ministry of Defense and General Staff Headquarters, to warn the Syrian government over recent actions asserting security and governance authority in the southern province of Suwayda. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant and Prime Minister Netanyahu made consecutive statements on July 16 and 17, emphasizing two core principles of Israel\u2019s Syria policy: ensuring \u201cdemilitarization\u201d south of Damascus, from the Golan Heights to the Druze Mountains, and protecting the Druze community. Faced with Israel’s first punitive military strike against the new Syrian regime in six months, the Syrian government announced a ceasefire agreement in Suwayda and withdrew security forces, clearly adopting a strategy of forbearance to avoid Israel\u2019s aggressive suppression.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s blatant airstrike on Syrian military institutions and interference in its internal affairs has triggered widespread condemnation and dissatisfaction from the international community. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and nine other Arab countries issued a joint statement strongly condemning Israel\u2019s flagrant violation of international law, blatant infringement of Syrian sovereignty, and undermining of Syria\u2019s security, stability, territorial integrity, and citizen safety. China, Russia, and the United States also unusually stood united in rejecting Israel\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
Observers believe that Israel’s heavy-handed attack on the new Syrian regime indicates that under the dual pressure of personal legal troubles and a collapsing ruling coalition, Netanyahu is resorting to military adventurism and territorial expansion to deflect internal pressures. In the long run, Israel\u2019s brazen interference in Syrian internal affairs, its obstruction of Syrian territorial unification, and its attempt to establish a so-called \u201cDavid Corridor\u201d reveal a longstanding ambition for a \u201cGreater Israel,\u201d posing a challenge to the Trump administration\u2019s recent efforts to normalize U.S.-Syria relations, and inevitably casting a shadow over the Abraham Accords that both the U.S. and Israel seek to expand.<\/p>\n
According to multiple reports, starting on July 13, the Druze-majority province of Suwayda erupted in ethnic conflict involving Druze and Arab Bedouins, spiraling out of control. On July 14, the Syrian government dispatched security forces to restore order and, in doing so, expanded central government authority. Following their deployment, Syrian forces appeared to take sides, engaging in looting and burning of Druze homes. During this time, Israel not only launched airstrikes on Syrian forces in Suwayda but also allowed Druze people under Israeli control in the Golan Heights and within Israel to carry weapons into Suwayda to support their kin.<\/p>\n
Since the regime change in Damascus late last year, Syria has been constrained by the U.S., Israel, Turkey, and other forces, creating a transitional balance of power. However, some regions have experienced factional purges due to historical grievances. The Alawite faction, located in coastal provinces like Latakia and stripped of central power, has faced brutal retribution from the new regime, drawing widespread international concern.<\/p>\n
The Suwayda factional conflict is not only a microcosm of Syria\u2019s governance challenges but also a recurrence of the country’s long-standing ethnic and sectarian strife. In essence, it follows the same script as the Alawite purge. Syria is a majority Arab Sunni Muslim country, while the Shiite offshoot Alawite sect and the minority Druze have long been marginalized and suppressed. For the past half-century, the Alawite Assad family ruled Syria, providing strong protection for these minority sects.<\/p>\n
The Druze, numbering around one million and scattered across Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, share a common fate. Especially those living within Israel and the Golan Heights enjoy a \u201csuper second-class citizen\u201d status under Israel\u2019s divide-and-rule policy. They maintain a unique bond with Israel\u2019s Jewish majority, including military service, political participation, and access to civil rights. This \u201cthe enemy of my enemy is my friend\u201d relationship makes the Druze a useful lever for Israel in reshaping regional dynamics and advancing the \u201cGreater Israel\u201d plan.<\/p>\n
Since capturing the so-called \u201cMiddle East water tower\u201d Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, Israel has occupied 1,200 square kilometers (about two-thirds of the Heights), incorporating many Druze unwilling to leave their homeland into its governance. For over 40 years before the fall of the Assad regime, Syria abided by a ceasefire agreement, maintaining a long cold peace with Israel, and the two sides held multiple negotiations over the Golan issue.<\/p>\n
Over the past decade, as Iranian and Hezbollah influence grew, Syria became a proxy battlefield for Israeli airstrikes. Yet, Israel never actively sought to overthrow Syria, an important member of the \u201caxis of resistance,\u201d as they shared a common enemy \u2014 the \u201cIslamic State\u201d forces based on Salafist ideology. At the same time, Israel has increasingly expressed its intention to permanently annex the Golan Heights, a move recognized by the Trump administration in 2019.<\/p>\n
By the end of 2024, the \u201cSham Liberation Organization\u201d (formerly known as the \u201cAl-Nusra Front\u201d), which once belonged to \u201cAl-Qaeda,\u201d quickly seized Damascus, taking advantage of Israel’s efforts to weaken Iran and Hezbollah and the fact that Russia was unable to send troops to defend the Assad regime. Israel not only completely destroyed Syria’s sea, land, and air equipment, but also sent troops to occupy the buffer zone on the Golan Heights between both armies, expanding its so-called defense depth and incorporating Syria’s Druze population into its own protection zone.<\/p>\n
The new Syrian regime abandoned the long-standing anti-American and anti-Jewish ideology and instead extended an olive branch to the United States and Israel, focusing its main efforts on reshaping relations with the Islamic world, integrating various armed factions, strengthening national unity, and economic reconstruction. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, replacing Russia and Iran and gaining key discourse power over the new Syria, took advantage of the Trump administration’s intention to withdraw from the Middle East and its “transactional diplomacy” to promote the normalization of US-Syria relations. This also seems to have created a new opportunity for the expansion of the Abraham Accords peace process by the United States and Israel, allowing Syria and Lebanon to follow in the footsteps of the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco in becoming new Arab partners of Israel.<\/p>\n
On July 1 this year, Trump signed an executive order lifting the 46-year-old arms embargo and economic blockade on Syria and allowing US companies to participate in Syrian oil and gas development. This move by the United States aims to integrate Syria and Lebanon into the regional governance system, especially to bring them into the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel. There are even reports that Syria and Israel held normalization talks in Azerbaijan, and Israel publicly emphasized that any form of Syria-Israel normalization will not come at the cost of giving up the Golan Heights. Israel\u2019s Golan Heights policy, along with recent military pressure, internal interference, and territorial fragmentation in Syria, undoubtedly closed the door for Syria and Lebanon to join the Abraham Accords, or at least opened a chasm difficult to cross.<\/p>\n
Although realpolitik prevails in the Middle East, no country is willing to normalize relations with Israel at the cost of giving up its inherent territory, nor does any government want to go down in history as one that sold out its nation. Egypt recovered the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace with Israel in 1978; the PLO reached the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993 under the principle of transitional autonomy; and Jordan established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1994 after resolving territorial disputes. As for the four Arab countries that signed the Abraham Accords, none of them had direct territorial disputes with Israel; they merely abandoned the Arab League’s collective consensus and gave up on their close kin, the Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Israel’s latest acts of aggression and expansion have increased its sphere of influence in Syria, blatantly obstructed the Syrian government’s efforts to unify its territory and sovereignty, and established a \u201cstate within a state\u201d in Syria in the name of protecting the Druze people. It also exploited the historical discord between the Druze and the Arab majority to further dismember Syria geographically, ethnically, and nationally, aggravating the dangers of Syria\u2019s territorial fragmentation, lack of unified sovereignty, and disintegration of governance.<\/p>\n
According to Arab News and other Arab, Turkish, and Iranian media, the Israeli government is playing the \u201cDruze card\u201d and even the \u201cKurdish card\u201d amid Middle East chaos, aiming to strip the Druze-populated Syrian provinces of Suwayda, Quneitra, and southern Daraa from Damascus\u2019s control. The ultimate goal is to build a \u201cDavid Corridor\u201d from the Golan Heights through southern Syria to Kurdish areas in Iraq and the Mesopotamian region, thereby expanding Israeli control over the heart of the Arab world and realizing the \u201cGreater Israel\u201d borders described in the Old Testament \u2014 a vast territory once inhabited by the ancestors of the Israelites, spanning the Mesopotamian region and the Nile Delta.<\/p>\n
On April 1, Israel\u2019s right-wing flagship media The Jerusalem Post<\/em> published a commentary by Veysi Dag, an international relations scholar at Hebrew University, titled \u201cThe Abraham Peace Corridor: A Strategic Path for Stability and Cooperation in the Middle East.\u201d It promoted the so-called \u201cAbraham Peace Corridor\u201d under the framework of the Abraham Accords, claiming that trade and commerce will consolidate regional and global security and \u201ccould become a vital lifeline for peaceful coexistence and economic prosperity in a region long plagued by conflict and division.\u201d This rhetoric that beautifies expansionist policies is reminiscent of Japan\u2019s militarist claim to build a \u201cGreater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere\u201d while wreaking havoc on East Asia.<\/p>\n Objectively speaking, Israel previously openly supported the Iraqi Kurds’ \u201cindependence referendum,\u201d and now claims to be the protector of Syrian Druze while secretly planning to carve up Syria with the \u201cDavid Corridor.\u201d This so-called new policy towards Syria, \u201cselling dog meat under a sheep\u2019s head\u201d can only reinforce enmity between the two countries, weaken mutual trust, and erode public support in Syria, Lebanon, and other Arab states for reconciliation with Israel and expansion of the Abraham Accords.<\/p>\n Some analysts believe Israel\u2019s new Syria policy of designating the area from south of Damascus to the Golan Heights and the Druze Mountains as a \u201cdemilitarized zone\u201d and \u201cprotecting the Druze\u201d may be a tactic to restrain the Syrian government and gain bargaining chips for negotiations over the Golan Heights. However, there is no indication that Israel, dominated by right-wing and far-right forces, will return the Golan Heights anytime soon. The Golan Heights is vital for Israel\u2019s freshwater supply (40% of its source), a key grain and fruit-producing region sustaining its economy and agriculture for decades. More importantly, only 60 kilometers from Damascus, the Golan Heights is Israel\u2019s strategic shield in the northeast, a national defense stronghold and strategic depth, and a choke point to contain Syria\u2019s political center. For Syria and Lebanon, the Abraham Accords expected by Israel amount to an ultimatum: relinquish the Golan Heights and let Israel benefit unilaterally \u2014 a demand neither government nor people can accept.<\/p>\n Without returning the Golan Heights, the occupation-versus-resistance relationship between Israel and Syria\/Lebanon cannot fundamentally change. Nationalism and theocratic ideology from both countries will continue to breed violent resistance and anti-Israel, anti-Semitic sentiment. Without sufficient and lasting security assurance, Israel will continue to pursue survival-of-the-fittest policies to maintain its illegal occupation, locking the region in a cycle of violence \u2014 a chicken-or-egg dilemma. When I visited the Golan Heights in 2011, a former Israeli Defense Forces officer who accompanied me said bluntly: \u201cIn a Middle East where only lions and sheep exist, Israel would rather be the lion.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, if Syria and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah completely shake off Iran’s influence, withdraw from the \u201cAxis of Resistance,\u201d abandon the traditional philosophy of struggle, and voluntarily propose normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for the return of occupied territory, it may become an important opportunity for the expansion of the Abraham Accords. The question is whether the Syrian government and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah can break out of the established ideological mold? The bigger question is whether the Israeli government\u2014especially the right-wing and far-right forces\u2014can let go of the decades-old fantasy of a \u201cGreater Israel\u201d? The prospects are clearly rather pessimistic, especially since Israel will not easily give up the land it has annexed, and the Israeli far-right forces will not readily abandon their habitual practice of \u201ccreating faits accomplis.\u201d<\/p>\n At present, Syria\u2019s territory is fragmented, and major powers and hostile forces both regional and external are supporting and manipulating proxy armed groups. National unification, political transition, and economic reconstruction remain in shambles. The weak new regime shows no sign of daring to declare a \u201cland for peace\u201d ice-breaking stance. Netanyahu\u2019s coalition government is also on the verge of collapse due to infighting and unrest. The entire state of Israel remains in a state of war, and adopting an offensive diplomacy is undoubtedly the best way to divert internal contradictions. These factors make the dream of an expanded Abraham Accords hard to reflect the reality of the Middle East\u2014particularly the complex and brutal disputes between Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon.<\/p>\n Prof. Ma is the Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University in Hangzhou. He specializes in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. He previously worked as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine, and Iraq.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On July 16, Israel brazenly launched airstrikes on key targets near the Syrian presidential palace, including the Ministry of Defense and General Staff Headquarters, to warn the Syrian government over recent actions asserting security and governance authority in the southern province of Suwayda. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant and Prime Minister Netanyahu made consecutive statements on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":10548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[9889,1334,4104,11494,288,812,814,531,5558,409,1192],"class_list":["post-10547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-abraham-accords","tag-gaza","tag-golan-heights","tag-great-israel-plan","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-syria","tag-syrian-golan-heights-occupation","tag-turkiye","tag-united-states"],"yoast_head":"\n