Israel Exploits Assad’s Fall to Expand Into Syria

While Syrians celebrated the toppling of the Assad regime following a swift operation by rebel forces on Sunday, Israel moved in. The Israeli military launched half a dozen airstrikes on Syrian targets and parked tanks inside Syria’s borders, in violation of a 50-year ceasefire pact.

Israeli airstrikes on Sunday targeted apparent missile and chemical weapons stockpiles. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the attacks were meant to keep those weapons from being used by “extremists.” And on Monday and Tuesday, Israel continued to strike dozens of other Syrian military targets — more than 350 — and claimed to have destroyed Syria’s navy.

The Israeli military on Sunday evening positioned its troops near five Syrian villages within a demilitarized zone just to the east of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and later illegally annexed. The movement of its troops violates a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria, which Israel has argued is null since Assad’s government has collapsed — though the agreement was struck with his father 50 years ago. The Israeli military has also posted soldiers atop the Syrian side of the 9,000-foot Mount Hermon, which also falls within the ceasefire demilitarized zone.

The Israeli government said Monday that its military strikes and operations inside Syria were preemptive security measures meant to protect its citizens, intended to create a larger buffer zone between the two nations as the new Syrian government takes shape. A letter written by Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. Security Council said that this was a “limited and temporary” security measure. However, a U.N. spokesperson said its peacekeeping forces in charge of security along the border had informed Israel that its actions violate the 1974 agreement and instructed “there should be no military forces or activities in the area.”

But for those who live inside the occupied Golan Heights, where thousands of Syrian Arabs still live, Israel’s recent operations are a troubling sign of possible further military aggression to come.

“It’s a very negative indication,” said Nizar Ayoub, founder of Al-Marsad, or the Arab Human Rights Center in the Golan Heights. “It means that in [the Golan], Israel is not interested in just and durable peace, and eventually this will make the situation here more complex, and we will continue to live in a situation of war.”

Syrians in the Golan Heights, an area of just 700 square miles located near the borders of Palestine, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon, are often caught up in the crossfire of various conflicts in the region.

Ayoub, who lives in Majdal Shams, a village on the northeastern edge of the Golan Heights close to the borders of Syria and Lebanon, said the past year has been horrifying. Israel and Hezbollah traded rocket fire for months across the area. In July, a rocket shell struck a football stadium in Majdal Shams, killing 12 children and injuring 32 others. Israel and Hezbollah have accused each other of responsibility for the strike. Weapons experts have said the strike was likely an accident.

Ayoub said he is concerned similar attacks will take place with Israel’s new military position in Syria near the Golan. Throughout Saturday and into Sunday evening, Ayoub said he had heard bombings taking place in the Golan and in Syria.

Even though Ayoub said it is unlikely Israel is looking to permanently occupy new lands, given its ongoing genocidal war in Gaza and its bombardments in Lebanon, it is common for Israel to expand its borders during times of war. Israel used its 2006 war in Lebanon as a pretext for occupying swaths of Syrian territory for apparent security reasons, said Ayoub. At the time, Israel alleged Hezbollah had been storing weapons in homes along the Syrian border.

This expansionist drive has played out in Israel’s more recent offensives, such as in Gaza and Lebanon, where military operations have dragged on indefinitely in the name of security, displacing and killing thousands of civilians in the process.

“It de facto is currently part of its expansionist policies,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. Israel “has an ever-expanding definition of what security means, and defense, and an ever-expanding border. It has ever-expanding borders in Gaza, in the West Bank, now in Syria and Lebanon.”

Zonszein said she did not think Israel had a premeditated plan to advance into new territory, and was instead scrambling to respond to a rapidly evolving situation following the rebel takeover of Damascus on Sunday.