Israel’s simultaneous push for peace and ongoing attacks in Syria are putting the country’s brand-new leader to the test, threatening to undermine his nascent rule as the hardline Islamist fighters who helped bring him to power risk turning against him.
Syrian Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former Islamist rebel chief who now seeks to unite a fractured nation after 14 years of bloody civil war, faces a precarious struggle to maintain equilibrium between securing legitimacy at home and placating a historic foe operating across one of the Middle East’s most volatile flashpoints.
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there’s also a balancing act. Israel is seeking to defy Sharaa’s potential ascent toward becoming a new Syrian strongman, this time with international backing, while at the same time avoiding a scenario in which even more radical forces seize the reins of a nation officials warn could be the next major hub for global militant groups and a staging ground for new attacks.
“From Israel’s side, keeping this regime not too strong, it’s eliminating this threat,” Eran Lahav, a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence analyst now serving as a senior researcher at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, told Newsweek.
“On the other hand,” he added, “if you make it too weak, then these forces can create anarchy.”
A History of Violence
Israel and Syria have been in a technical state of war since 1948, when they fought their first conflict as an Arab coalition battled the newly proclaimed Jewish state on territory also claimed by Palestinians. They fought twice more, first in 1967, resulting in Israel’s seizure of the Golan Heights, and again in 1973, resulting in a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between the Israel-controlled and Syria-controlled stretches of Syria’s southwest.
While the two nations have since avoided all-out conflict, Israel began conducting regular strikes against Syria after the country erupted in civil war in 2011. The conflict pitted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, against an array of rebel and jihadi groups, with Israel seeking to mitigate Iranian influence in the neighboring country.
Among the most powerful Islamist groups to emerge was the Nusra Front, originally Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, established by Sharaa in 2012. Sharaa, long known by his nom de guerre, Mohammed Abu al-Golani, returned to Syria after having been imprisoned by U.S. forces in Iraq, where he associated with future Islamic State militant group (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Sharaa rejected Baghdadi’s call to merge his group into ISIS and rebranded several times, later cutting ties with Al-Qaeda as well in 2016 and establishing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017. As the region was again plunged into war with the Palestinian Hamas movement conducting a deadly attack against Israel in October 2023, Syria was thrust on the frontlines as part the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance coalition.
Assad’s dramatic downfall at the hands of the rapid offensive led by Sharaa’s HTS and other insurgent factions marked a new turning point. While Netanyahu welcomed Assad’s ouster, he quickly ordered a historic series of strikes against former Syrian military sites as well as a ground incursion to seize additional territory beyond the Golan Heights buffer zone.
Sharaa condemned the strikes but argued his government posed no threat to Israel as he sought to oversee a more peaceful and inclusive path for Syria. Yet reports of state-aligned security forces targeting minority populations, such as Alawites, Druze and Kurds, have challenged these assertions.
Israel, which has a significant Druze population of its own, intervened in July with new strikes as Syrian Arab militias, including government-aligned forces, clashed with Druze factions in the south. Some Israeli politicians, including far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, even hinted at assassinating Sharaa at the time, before a U.S.-backed deal was reached.
Lahav, who recently co-authored a research paper outlining perceived threats posed by Syria’s new leadership, argued that Sharaa “shouldn’t be ruling Syria for too long,” noting reports of attempts on the Syrian leader’s life that U.S. special envoy for Syria and ambassador to Turkey appeared to confirm in July.
At the same time, Lahav emphasized that Israel “cannot be too naive” by who may replace him, particularly after Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack. He said Israel must “somehow balance it, not to keep him too strong, but not to kick him out too quickly.”
‘Principles of Jihad’
While Lahav acknowledges the presence of even more hardliners in Syria, he is among a number of Israeli analysts who continue to express skepticism toward Sharaa’s public dismissals of radical motivations.
He accused Sharaa of putting on a “masquerade” through which he was pursuing a “sophisticated jihad” with designs to strike not only at minorities at home but also neighboring nations.
“I think he’s trying to represent that he is now a Syrian nationalist who is actually focusing on rebuilding Syria,” Lahav said, “but once he has the chance, once he has all the finances—he is now closing deals with Saudi Arabia and Arab Emirates, every day there’s a new deal and new investment in Syria—once he will be strong enough, I think either he will go with his militants and will act against, let’s say, Lebanon, or against Israel.”
“One of the basic principles of jihad in general is you don’t attack when you’re not strong enough,” Lahav said. “You attack only when you’re strong enough. And I think, according to this principle, he’s waiting for this time, which is also, by the way, similar to what Hamas did.”
There is another nation Lahav mentions as pivotal to this equation, and that’s Turkey, an influential regional power, NATO member state and one of Shara’s most enthusiastic public supporters.
With the Axis of Resistance defeated in Syria and set back elsewhere throughout the many fronts of the war in Gaza, Lahav warned of “the rise of a new Sunni axis, because of the big threat that Sharaa brings with Turkey.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom Trump credited with helping to orchestrate the U.S. leader’s landmark meeting with Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May, has repeatedly warned Netanyahu against further intervention in Syria, setting the stage for a potential clash between two U.S. allies.
But Syrian observers argue that it’s just the kind of fight that they are trying to avoid, despite the ongoing Israeli operations that could potentially undermine Sharaa’s capacity to govern effectively as he pursues talks with Israel.
Radwan Ziadeh, senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, stated that the latest Israeli raid that reportedly killed at least six Syrian soldiers “can be seen as a little bit of a surprise here in Damascus.”
“The Syrian government, I think, thought having a direct negotiation with the presence of the U.S. will prevent Israel from ongoing attacks against the Syrian government side,” Ziadeh told Newsweek. “But it looks like the extreme Israeli government, it does not care about this negotiation, and they do believe maybe that they do that from the position of strength, as Netanyahu repeated many times.”
At the same time, noting how the government has not issued any direct threats to Israel beyond criticizing such attacks, he warned that these operations also “make the perception that the current Syrian government is very weak, is not capable to control sovereignty of Syrian territory or the integrity of Syrian territory, or prevent any such kind of escalation from the Israeli side.”
Adding to the pressure building upon Sharaa is the popular sentiment demanding the return of Syrian territory held by Israel.
“I don’t think the Syrian people will accept any deal that would not include the Golan Heights,” Ziadeh said. “Still, the majority of Syrians, I can say the vast majority, consider the Golan as a part of Syrian land, with Syria occupied illegally after the 1967 war, and this is why I think it’s part of the understanding.”
Thus far, Netanyahu has sought to reject any suggestion he would be giving up land as part of an agreement with Sharaa.
Back in December, the Israeli premier vowed Israel would hold onto the territory, which it annexed without international recognition in 1981, “for eternity.” More recently, as new talks between the two sides came to light, his office dismissed reports Israel would even consider ceding the disputed Shabaa Farms, also known as Mount Dov, as “fake news.”
Between War and Peace
Officially, a peace deal remains a key goal for Israel, much in the way the country secured recognition from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco through the U.S.-backed Abraham Accords launched under President Donald Trump’s first administration in 2020.
Yuval Donio-Gideon, consul for public diplomacy at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, recently told Newsweek that his country was “open to come to relevant arrangements, hopefully sooner than later, with the government in Syria,” noting past attempts at peace under Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, that ultimately unraveled.
“For many, many years, we aspired to do that, and there was a very clear ‘no’ on behalf of the Syrian side,” Donio-Gideon said at the same time. “Now, things will be different, and we’ll see how it plays.”
Faced with Sharaa’s promises of a new Syria that would not be hostile to Syria, Donio-Gideon said Israeli officials “explore carefully, not only the statement, but also the deed of the new government in Syria, and within the context of Israel’s security and within the context of other vast interests that we have in the immediate area attached to Israel’s border.”
Yet Israel’s strategy, both at the negotiating table and the battlefield, has thus raised doubts within Syria about Netanyahu’s willingness to achieve a lasting peace.
Mahmoud Toron, a Syrian politician close to the transitional government, argued that, “looking at the current situation, I don’t believe that Israel is serious about a peace deal while conducting continuous military aggression and a behavior like that does not signal their intention to or their serious intentions to engage in a serious peace treaty.”
Like Ziadeh, he felt what may be more readily attainable is a bilateral security pact that would serve as the “foundation of running the day-to-day security challenges facing both countries in a complex environment.”
At the same time, he argued that Israel’s continued actions have only proven damaging to Syria’s stability, with limited options for the government to respond.
“Obviously, any military aggression will undermine any country’s stability, and Syria is in a situation where it’s already left a 14-year conflict that has already left some, some very heavy consequences on the social life, on the economic life, and on all aspects of civil life in Syria,” Toron told Newsweek, “so adding now military action, from time to time … is surely not going to make things easier, but make things a lot harder.”
“On the government’s response, there isn’t much options that this government has other than seeking dialogue and seeking the assistance of influential states to exercise pressure on Israel,” he added, “because the other option, obviously, the military one, is completely ruled out for all sorts of reasons, and the main one is the lack of military capabilities to counter Israeli aggression, whether it is air defenses or even the possibility of retaliation.”
Still, he argued that Sharaa’s pragmatic diplomacy was winning over the Syrian populace, rather than inciting it.
“I think the president understands the challenges,” Toron said. “He understands the consequences of falling into the Israeli trap of direct confrontation, but also, the president is not in a position to make serious concessions, particularly with regards to Syrian territory annexed illegally by Israel. This is a matter of delicate diplomacy and long negotiations that we need to we need to wait and see how it will develop internally.”
“There is no anger right now at the president,” he added, “because everybody knows to what extent Israel can go with its aggression and military activity, obviously looking at what they did in Gaza and what they did in Lebanon as well.”
Trump’s Push for Peace
Less than nine months since half a century of Baathist rule in Syria came to an abrupt end, the role of the U.S. in the country remains in question.
The U.S. initially aided a number of rebel groups fighting Assad only to shift sides in 2015 to back the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as ISIS began to gain ground nationwide. A limited deployment of U.S. troops remained in the country after ISIS was declared defeated with the official mission of preventing the group’s resurgence, along with the secondary goal of preventing the spread of Iran-backed factions that grew increasingly active amid the war in Gaza.
Sharaa’s rise to power immediately introduced challenges as both he and HTS had been placed on U.S. terrorism lists. Trump appeared to change course on this in meeting Sharaa and announcing the lifting of sanctions on Syria.
Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former State Department and National Security Council official focused on Syria, said Washington would likely seek to promote a stable and inclusive transition with the support of regional partners.
“There is this opportunity, by working with allies that involve Saudi, Qatar, and then with the Turks, to swap the country over from being Shia-minority dominated or otherwise, minority-dominated, to one that represents the majority in Syria,” Tabler told Newsweek. “But the problem is it a stable order? And I think this is where it gets to those conversations about composition with the government.
“Normally these kinds of things fall under the rubric of nation building, but here, I think the top issue of the government is really getting stability,” he added. “It’s just about being able to manage having Druze and Kurds and others from the 25-odd percent of the population that’s minorities working together with the interim government and not simply causing the interim government grief and causing them to play whack-a-mole all the time.”
So far, however, he argued the process has been “fragmented” due to the episodes of violence and concerns over the orientation of core HTS members, who “probably are going to have pretty strong opinions on Israel in general, the Palestinian conflict, particularly [Israel] holding on to Syrian territory.”
As for Israel’s strikes, he said such operations have a history of success in certain situations but also came with potential risks that could backfire.
“The quickest way to change anybody’s behavior is the precise use of military force in an emergency. You turn everything on a dime,” Tabler said. “Influencing their political behavior over time is much harder. So, you can have that political process be punctuated with these Israeli interventions, but that might make him look weaker and weaken him vis-à-vis with these other more radical elements.”
The stakes are also high for Trump, who has sought to weigh the competing interests of Netanyahu, Erdogan and Sharaa himself amid a campaign of global peacekeeping initiatives.
Mona Yacoubian, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Middle East Program and a former official at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Middle East Bureau, argued that “the United States and President Trump specifically have staked a lot on Syria’s successful transition,”
“By meeting personally with the transitional president and announcing the lifting of Syria sanctions, President Trump has a personal stake in Syria’s stabilization,” Yacoubian told Newsweek. “As such, the administration has pressured Israel to stand down from some of its bolder military actions.”
“Given Syria’s location in the heart of the Middle East, its unraveling would pose a much broader threat to regional stability and, with it, President Trump’s stated goal to be a peacemaker in the region,” she said. “The administration can therefore be expected to push hard on both parties to de-escalate tensions.”
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