Will The Israelis Occupy Damascus?

Robert Inlakesh 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

In one year, the Israeli regime has occupied 400+ km² of southern Syria with near-total impunity, while the Syrian leadership avoids confronting Tel Aviv, leaving the nation vulnerable.

A year has passed since the fall of the previous Syrian leadership, during which internecine conflict has raged on, distracting from the fact that the Israelis have occupied enormous swaths of territory and are acting inside the country with total impunity.

In one year, the Zionist entity has conquered over 400 square kilometers of territory inside southern Syria. Except for a few isolated cases of local resistance against the occupying regime, they have faced no pushback whatsoever. In fact, such a retreat from confronting an overt campaign to occupy a nation's territory and rob it of its sovereignty makes the predicament of the country unique in history.

Inside Syria, according to recent polling data, 96% of the population have negative views of the Israeli regime, which when you consider the support provided to non-State actors inside Syria and propaganda campaigns targeting minority groups, makes it clear that the people stand united in their rejection of it. No amount of deception, nor the co-opting of leadership, can change this fact amongst the majority of the Syrian people.

Even the most ardent supporters of Syrian President, Ahmed al-Shara’a, have repeatedly chanted slogans against the Israelis and in support of Gaza. It is therefore a logical contradiction that most of these individuals appear incapable of criticizing their leadership for holding direct meetings with Israeli officials, inviting in Zionist delegations, allowing Israeli citizens to visit Damascus, and even providing an Israeli journalist a tour of military sites.

The behaviour of the Syrian leadership when it comes to the US is also clearly out of line with the branding and rhetoric that many of the fighters belonging to the governing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham coalition adopt. This is to say, you can’t, on the one hand, chant in favour of liberating Palestine and claim to be fighting a religiously motivated war, while your leader is playing ball [quite literally] with CENTCOM. Even justifying this behaviour on the basis of sectarianism or along nationalist lines does not explain the cognitive dissonance on display here.

All of this being said, it is clear that Syrians will eventually be forced to resist their occupiers. So far, despite the promises of economic prosperity and pandering to the West in order to remove the criminal US sanctions on Syria, the great bounce back of the State has not materialised. This is also a failed strategy; to depend on the US. It is clear that Washington is holding the sanctions card over the heads of Syrians in order to keep Damascus in line. 

Will The Israelis Conquer Damascus?

Another clear threat is that if the Syrian leadership loses its usefulness to the Israelis and instead becomes a nuisance, it is very likely that “Tel Aviv” will order the assassination of Ahmed al-Shara’a. However, a direct airstrike on his position will not be the most likely means of delivering this blow, because it would almost certainly trigger some kind of reaction.

Instead, as various Israeli military analysts and think-tanks are beginning to speak of more frequently now, it is more likely that an assassination operation will take place on the ground using proxies or attempting to blame it on a specific group. 

While it is also plausible that any armed group could attempt to assassinate the current Syrian leader, as there are many grievances between various organisations in the country, an Israeli operation is indeed a very likely possibility. If this were pulled off, the calculation is that almost immediately there will be a power struggle between rival Syrian groups.

As such battles begin to determine the future leadership, the Israelis will be given a free hand to run incursions deep into the country’s territory. Not only will they likely physically carve out a direct route to Sweida in the south, if the conditions permit it, but an initiative to enter Damascus may evolve.

At this current time, such an operation would be met with a unified defense, and Ahmed al-Shara’a would not have any choice in such a matter, which is why it won’t happen. However, for the Israelis, the symbolism of raising their flag in the Syrian capital will be very meaningful for their so-called “Greater Israel” vision. To be clear, it is not likely that they would stay there, but it is certain that they would seek to achieve the photo-op.

For the Israelis, symbolic victories like these are of great importance to them. Last year, during its failed ground invasion in southern Lebanon, countless Israeli analysts lamented the fact that its military could no longer reach the Litani River and noted that prior to Hezbollah, they were able to reach Beirut and plant an Israeli flag. 

At the end of the October 1973 war, the Israeli military violated the ceasefire under the direct threat of the Soviet Union becoming involved to aid Egypt, which they pledged could happen if it was to come within 100 kilometers of Cairo. The Zionist military was ordered to come within 99 kilometers of the Egyptian capital and carve out a piece of pavement on the Suez-Cairo road.

It is clear that Syria’s leadership will not dare to launch a defensive campaign against the invading Israeli army at this time, in fact they refuse to even threaten any military response. Instead, they seek to work through the United States to appeal to the Israelis; that they not create too many issues for them.

If you read the Israeli Hebrew media, it is clear they view Syria, not as a country, but as a region to be exploited. To them, it is a territory that must be viewed with caution, but is no major threat to it beyond the possibility that armed militia groups will decide at some point to turn their guns on them.

What we are currently watching is the Israeli honeymoon phase in its relationship with the new Syria, which appears to be heading towards expiry. This era has enabled the mass occupation of Syrian territory, while the Israelis have sought to weaponise sectarian divides to their own benefit.

Despite the mobilisation of Syrian armed units, alongside allied militias and Bedouin tribal fighters, all to battle fellow Syrians, they have never once been deployed to deal with the single greatest threat to the nation's sovereignty. Instead, these forces are only mobilised to fight against Alawites in the coastal regions, or to the greatest pleasure of the Israelis, the Druze in Sweida.

Keep in mind that the current government of Syria is run by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is a rebrand of al-Nusra Front. The Nusra Front was formally backed by the Zionist entity and its fighters had even received medical attention in Israeli field hospitals. In 2013, the occupying regime began backing over a dozen Syrian opposition groups, many of them aligned with Al-Qaeda and even Daesh at different phases of the war.

What convinced the Druze militia forces to join the side of Bashar al-Assad in the war were a series of sectarian massacres committed against their people. Now, the Israelis are swooping in, claiming to be the saviour of the Syrian Druze, following attacks from many of the militant groups they once supported. This is to say that the Zionists will use anyone at any given time, depending upon what benefits there are in doing so.

Also in 2013, the Israelis had begun to devise a number of plans for their new Syria “buffer zone” and expressed particular interest in backing a Druze puppet regime, one that would allow them to carve out a direct supply route to this territory, through the occupied Golan Heights. The Zionist entity would later take advantage of the gains made by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast of the country, forming relations with them too. 

The blueprint for carving up the Syrian State into a series of dysfunctional sectarian regimes - all of which will be forced to depend upon foreign handouts in order to function - was already drawn up over a decade ago.

It is no coincidence that the Israeli air force launched its largest ever air campaign against Syria, taking out most of the nation's military assets and strategic arsenal, on the same day the former regime fell. This was an air operation that had been drawn up many years prior, but hadn’t happened because there was never an opportunity to initiate it.

Now that the country is in a totally dysfunctional and divided state, the Israeli goal is to exacerbate all feuds, then jump at the opportunity to gnaw even more off of the Syrian carcass. Unless there emerges a formidable resistance force emerges inside Syria, the country will continue to be subjected to the will of “Tel Aviv”.

Yet, given the apparent refusal of many inside Syria to deal with the reality that their government has bent the knee to the US and Israeli regime, it may quite literally take the Merkava tanks arriving in Damascus for them to realise the catastrophe that has befallen their nation. It is a painful pill to swallow, yet the truth is that Syria is just as much an occupied nation as is Palestine.