Daniel L. Douek
The Conversation / December 11, 2024
When Hamas strategist Yahya Sinwar ordered the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis, he was planning to deal a mortal blow to an Israel weakened by internal divisions.
Sinwar, killed by Israeli forces in Gaza a year later, likely did not imagine that he was instead setting in motion a cascade of events that would bring down longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and weaken the Iranian “Axis of Resistance” alliance to which Hamas belongs.
Yet to understand the timing of Assad’s fall at the hands of rebels from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the “Movement for the Liberation of the Levant,” or HTS), we need to consider the war triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel. That conflict has escalated into Israel’s invasion of Gaza, its war with Hezbollah and direct confrontations between Israel and Iran.
As we consider Syria’s future, we must also consider how it might be affected by the ongoing regional war in Gaza.
Gaza war set the HTS wheels in motion
So how is HTS’s stunning advance on Damascus linked to this regional war? HTS forces had planned their offensive six months ago and received tacit approval from Turkey, which shares a northern border with Syria.
At that time, the Lebanese Shi’a militia, Hezbollah, was still deploying thousands of troops in southern Syria to protect the Assad regime. Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, had long viewed Syria as a key link in Iran’s regional alliance because it was a crucial transfer point for Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah. Any HTS attack at this point would have faced stiff resistance.
Hezbollah, with tens of thousands of trained fighters and an arsenal of well over 100,000 missiles and rockets, was widely considered to be the world’s most powerful non-state army. But Hezbollah — whose daily rocket fire at Israel since Oct. 8, 2023, forced the evacuation of more than 60,000 Israeli citizens — overplayed its hand.
Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah would only stop firing rockets once Israel had reached a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. Suddenly, in September, Israel launched an offensive in which it killed Hezbollah’s military leadership and Nasrallah himself, followed by an invasion into southern Lebanon in which over 3,000 Hezbollah fighters were killed.
On Nov. 27, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire with Israel and began to withdraw its forces from Syria. That same day, HTS launched its invasion of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.
A weakened Iran
Hezbollah was the capstone of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, a collection of militias in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria backed by Iran’s own military power. But after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Oct. 1, Israeli airstrikes a few weeks later damaged sensitive military facilities and wiped out Iranian air defences, exposing the country to further attack.
With Hezbollah weakened and Iran’s territory vulnerable, Syria’s Assad regime was the next domino to fall.
Syria fought wars against Israel in 1948, 1967, 1973 and 1982. How will its new government perceive Israel? HTS leader Mohammed al-Julani has said HTS, unlike al-Qaeda or ISIS, will not pursue anti-western violence. HTS praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks and supports the Palestinian cause, but since seizing power, HTS leadership has made no pronouncement specifically about Israel.
On Dec. 8, a group of HTS fighters in Damascus declared they will attack Israel next, but this does not necessarily represent the aims of the broader movement. Hezbollah’s recent battlefield setbacks would presumably deter other armed groups from confronting Israel, at least in the short term.
Questionable Israeli, American moves
Yet recent Israeli moves risk starting off relations with a new Syrian government on the wrong foot. As Assad fled Syria on Dec. 7, Israel began waves of airstrikes targeting Syria’s remaining air force, missiles and navy, along with remnants of its chemical weapons program, to deny them to future hostile entities.
The United States similarly launched airstrikes against ISIS targets in northeast Syria. Since Dec. 8, Israel has also seized Syrian territory facing the highly strategic Golan Heights that the Israelis captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
The Israeli government claimed this capture of Syrian territory to be a “temporary defensive” move to ensure it would not fall into jihadist hands, but it was condemned by the United Nations and several Arab states.
On Dec. 10, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel does not want to “meddle in Syria’s internal affairs” or provoke war with HTS rebels, but that Israel is prepared to fight if attacked.
But the risk is real that Israel’s pre-emptive moves could spiral into a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the hostile forces Israeli authorities seek to deter could instead be provoked into attacking Israel.
And although Assad’s fall has struck a serious blow to the Axis of Resistance, it’s possible that weak governments in Lebanon and Jordan could fall next, creating a jihadist axis that would pose an entirely new security challenge to the region.
Daniel L. Douek – Faculty Lecturer, International Relations, McGill University
