Will Israel and a Trump White House Miss a Historic Window of Opportunity with Syria? (Dina Kraft, December 23, 2024)
Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English.
One evening last week a flutter of reports appeared in the Israeli media in quick succession with what at first appeared to be breakthrough news – Benjamin Netanyahu on his way to Cairo ostensibly to finalize a deal with Hamas, a Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement at hand.
The reports, however, were swiftly proven to be baseless, even wishful thinking.
But where was Netanyahu who had requested to excuse his absence that day in the courtroom hearing the corruption case against him on account of official state business? Was he not hard at work on major diplomatic advances – especially as the country remains on exhausted on edge waiting for a truce with Hamas that would lead to the release of its 100 hostages being held in Gaza?
The answer revealed itself quickly in the release of a photo of the Israeli prime minister wearing a flak jacket and sunglasses, standing alongside his new defense minister and about 25 Israeli soldiers clasping M-16s on the snowcapped peak of Mount Hermon, on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
The area is part of a narrow buffer zone between the two countries inside Syria that Israel seized just as Syrian rebel forces were taking control of Damascus earlier this month, describing the move as defensive and temporary. But by the time of the photo op, ten days later, Defense Minister Katz declared it essential, promising Israel would stay there “for as long as is needed.”
He justified the open-ended time frame saying Israel needs to be there to bolster Israel’s security and to deter both Hezbollah and the rebel forces in Damascus who, he said, “pretend to present a moderate image but belong to the most extreme Islamic sects.”
No doubt Israel has to proceed with caution, and its blitz of hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syrian military installations, since Assad fell, including chemical weapons sites (lest in fall into the “wrong hands”)is evidence that it is being extremely proactive.
But there are many Syria experts in Israel who see a Syria focused more on recovering from decades of Assad’s dictatorship than a risk to Israel, hailing it as a moment of historic potential. Some, including Eyal Zisser, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University, see Israel sinking its boots into the Syrian side of the Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 post-Yom Kippur War agreement that set up the area as a no-man’s land, as more a show of muscle flexing than real defensive need.
Carmit Valensi, director of the Syria research program at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank in Tel Aviv, told the Economist. “There are more opportunities for Israel in Syria than threats now … With Assad gone and Iran no longer powerful in Syria, Israel has a chance to use diplomacy with the new players in Syria and try to ensure security.”
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian rebel group with jihadist roots that helped overthrow Bashar Assad has said he would not let Syria become a base of operations for attacks on Israel. He also called on Israel to back off from the attacks on military sites and to withdraw from the buffer zone.
In recent days Al-Sharra has shed his military garb for a suit as he continues to present himself as a pragmatist who will unite a fractured Syria and work with the international community to help it rebuild.
Among his most recent visitors, the U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf who came to a Damascus to meet him in person at a Damascus hotel. After what was described by US diplomats as a “very productive” meeting reviewing the political transition of the country, a decision was made to remove a 10 million dollar bounty on his head. The group he leads, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was originally affiliated with al Qaeda.
But Leaf was careful to leave with cautionary words, saying “We will judge by deeds, not just by words. Deeds are the critical thing."
On Monday Israel’s Channel 12 reported that American officials are urging Israel to open ties with al-Sham, sending a report that reads, “Cooperation and communication channels of yours with al-Julani (al-Shaham’s nom de guerre) will bolster Israel’s influence in the entire area … We are talking about a pragmatic leader who wants to develop strategic relations with the nations of the region.”
On the night of September 27 Netanyahu stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly and in during his address held up two maps, one he called “a map of blessing” highlighting Israel, Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia in green and another as a “map of a curse” highlighting Iran, Iraq, and Syria in black, which he described as a “a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.”
While Netanyahu was speaking that night in New York, back home in Israel air force jets were preparing to take off to strike Hezbollah’s headquarters in a basement building in Beirut, targeting and killing Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Since then the “Axis of Resistance” has further crumbled not just with the decimation of the Hezbollah leadership, but the toppling of the Assad regime which for years had served as Iran’s highway for transporting weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The October 7 Hamas attack has reset a new regional order in the Middle East but not as its leaders imagined thanks in part to Israel’s offensive moves in the past three months against Hezbollah and Iran.
But military operations should, experts argue, help set up diplomatic, political openings, not just serve as a conduit for more military force.
In a recent analysis in Foreign Affairs, Amos Yadlin a retired Israeli general and former head of military intelligence and Amos Golove, a former director of Israel’s national security council, argue for Israel to take advantage of this turning point moment in the Middle East to make bold political moves.
“It has both the opportunity and the responsibility to steer the region’s trajectory toward a new, more peaceful and sustainable reality. Currently, Israel’s ability to force regional changes militarily outpaces its readiness to articulate and enact a cohesive strategic vision; its operational successes do not, as yet, have clear strategic ideas to go along with them. Israel should push for a political framework to match its battlefield successes,” they wrote.
Their suggest to make that happen, “An Arab-Israeli coalition backed by the United States could repel threats from Shiite and Sunni radicals, provide the Palestinians with a realistic political future, safeguard Israel’s security interests, secure the return of the Israeli hostages still in Gaza, and prevent another attack on Israeli soil.”
But with an incoming Trump administration with an isolationist outlook that has already indicated the United States will not intervene in Syria and a hardline Israeli government that seems more interested in military action over diplomacy – will the window of opportunity to help stabilize Syria slam shut at everyone’s peril?