In a message to the new regime taking shape in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel wants to establish relations, but won’t hesitate to attack if it threatens the Jewish state.
“We have no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of Syria,” he said in a video statement, “but we certainly do intend to do what is necessary to ensure our security.”
Therefore, he said, the Israeli Air Force was bombing “military strategic capabilities” left by the Syrian military of the ousted Assad regime, “so that they won’t fall into the hands of the jihadists.”
“We want correct relations with the new regime in Syria,” he went on. “But if this regime allows Iran to reestablish itself in Syria, or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to Hezbollah, or attacks us, we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price from it.”
“What happened to the previous regime will also happen to this regime,” he warned.
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Netanyahu compared the widespread air force bombing campaign of Syria’s strategic military capabilities this week to the 1940 Royal Navy bombing of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria to keep it from falling into the hands of the Nazis. Netanyahu mistakenly attributed the operation to the Royal Air Force.
The Israeli operations in Syria came in the wake of a lightning offensive by rebel forces there, which on Sunday toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad in a dramatic two-week chapter of a civil war that began in 2011, and which had been locked in a stalemate for years.
The Assad regime was an ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a part of the latter’s so-called Axis of Resistance against Israel.
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Syrians celebrate the arrival of opposition fighters as they step on a picture of Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Syria, December 8, 2024. (Omar Sanadiki/AP)
For years, Syria was used as a thruway for Iranian weapons, en route to terror groups including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, with which Israel entered a shaky ceasefire last month.
Israel fears that following the collapse of the Assad regime, the former Syrian army’s weapons could fall into the hands of hostile forces in the country, as well as the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Defense Minister Israel Katz also issued a warning to Syria’s rebels, saying that any entity that poses a threat to Israel will be targeted relentlessly.
“The IDF has acted in the last few days to attack and destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel,” he said, during a tour of the Haifa naval base during which he was briefed on the Navy’s strikes on the Assad regime’s naval assets.
He warned the rebels that “whoever follows Assad’s footsteps will end up like Assad did. We won’t allow an extremist Islamic terror entity to act against Israel from beyond its borders… we will do anything to remove the threat.”
An aerial photo shows a Syrian naval ship destroyed in an overnight Israeli attack in the port city of Latakia on December 10, 2024. (AAREF WATAD / AFP)
Katz reiterated the IDF is creating a demilitarized area and said he ordered a “sterile defensive zone” to be created in southern Syria, without a permanent Israeli presence, to prevent any terrorist threat to Israel.
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Following Assad’s fall, Israel moved to destroy regime weapons sites before they could fall into the hands of forces hostile to the country, amid the chaotic takeover by rebel groups, many of which were originally formally linked with al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups.
Israel has said it will not become involved in the conflict in Syria and that its seizure of the buffer zone established in 1974 was a defensive move.
Israel said its airstrikes would carry on for days, but told the UN Security Council that it was not intervening in Syria’s conflict. It added that it had taken “limited and temporary measures” solely to protect its security.
Israel and Syria do not have diplomatic relations and have been in a perpetual state of war, albeit a relatively quiet one, since Israel declared independence in 1948.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, tours Mount Bental on Israel’s border with Syria along with military officers and Defense Minister Israel Katz, left, on December 8, 2024. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)
Syria was one of a number of Arab countries that attacked the newly born Jewish state, and despite an armistice agreement signed in 1949 that demarcated a border between the two countries, Syria has never formally recognized Israel’s existence.
Syria also attacked during the 1967 Six-Day War, before the IDF pounded Syrian forces and seized the Golan Heights, which Israel later annexed unilaterally.
Syria attacked again in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War and was pushed back after a major advance into the Golan, after which the 1974 disengagement agreement was signed between the states, marking the demilitarized zones on the Israel-Syrian border.
While the fall of the Assad regime, which stood for over five decades, could provide a historic opportunity for recognition between Israel and its neighbor, the potential power vacuum in Syria could also provide an opportunity for further chaos and serve as a breeding ground for a resurgence of terror in the region.