Israel launched waves of heavy airstrikes across Syria on Tuesday, targeting what it described as military sites to prevent abandoned weapons from falling into the hands of rebel fighters.
The intensified aerial campaign, carried out alongside Israel’s first ground operation in Syrian territory since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, drew international condemnation and added a dangerous new variable to the volatile situation in Syria, where armed groups are attempting to establish a new political order following the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Tuesday that its warplanes had conducted 350 strikes on Syrian territory since Sunday. The attacks destroyed dozens of missiles, an airfield, weapons production facilities in five cities and 15 naval vessels - effectively eliminating the Syrian navy.
Images aired on Syrian television showed sunken boats and smoldering wreckage in the western city of Latakia, the country’s main port and a former stronghold of Assad and his minority Alawite base. Other footage depicted scorched buildings, a destroyed aircraft hangar and loud explosions from the heavy bombardment.
Protecting the country from future attack
Israeli officials characterized the extensive strikes as preemptive, aimed at protecting the country from future attacks rather than responding to an immediate threat. They invoked similar reasoning Monday to justify moving troops beyond a U.N.-monitored buffer zone in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
“I approved the air force bombing of strategic military capabilities left by the Syrian military so that they will not fall into the hands of the jihadists,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video address on Tuesday.
Netanyahu expressed interest in forging relations with Syria’s new government but warned the rebels against attacking Israel or allowing Iran and its proxies to regain a foothold in the country. “We will respond with force and exact a heavy price,” he said.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel group that led the rapid offensive from northern Idlib to Damascus in under two weeks, has not commented on the Israeli strikes. The group is focused on transitioning from a military to a political force and is struggling to address cash and food shortages in the capital and beyond. Meanwhile, other armed factions are vying for influence in the power vacuum left by more than 50 years of Assad family rule.
“We are continuing to see Israeli movements and bombardments into Syrian territory,” said Geir Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy to Syria, on Tuesday. “This needs to stop.” Similar appeals have come from governments across the Middle East, including Baghdad and Riyadh.
Violating international law
The Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry accused Israel on Monday of violating international law and “sabotag(ing) Syria’s chances of restoring its security, stability and territorial integrity.”
The United States, Israel’s main military and diplomatic backer, described its ally’s actions as “non-permanent” and undertaken under “exigent circumstances.”
“We don’t want to see any actor … move themselves in such a way that makes it harder for the Syrian people to get at legitimate governance,” John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council spokesman, said on Tuesday.
Israel has claimed credit for the fall of Assad, with Netanyahu boasting Monday that he had “reshaped the Middle East” by weakening Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. At the same time, Israel has expressed concerns about the structure of the new Syrian state. HTS, originally an offshoot of al-Qaeda during Syria’s civil war, has sought to rebrand itself as a moderate Islamist organization, pledging to protect religious minorities and restore Syria’s regional standing.
Aiming to establish ‘sterile defense zone’
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military aims to establish a “sterile defense zone” in southern Syria to “prevent the entrenchment and organization of terror.”
As Syria’s military dissolved in the face of rebel advances, it abandoned bases believed to contain significant munitions, including remnants of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile.
A nerve-gas attack on a Damascus suburb in 2013 killed nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children, according to U.S. intelligence. American officials at the time called the attack an “indiscriminate, inconceivable horror.” Under a deal brokered between then-President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, hundreds of tons of chemical weapons were removed from Syria and destroyed, significantly depleting but not eliminating Assad’s arsenal.
By targeting these sites now, Israel is acting within a “window of opportunity,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former Israeli military official now with the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
Kuperwasser said the strikes on chemical and other munitions are necessary “to make sure whoever is going to be the next ruler (of Syria) is not going to have state-of-the-art weaponry.” He added that such strikes could not have been launched while Assad was in power: “It would have been considered belligerent activity. Now I think everyone understands.”
That understanding does not extend to ordinary Syrians, whose initial joy over Assad’s ouster has been tempered by renewed anxiety over insecurity as explosions rock the capital.
‘Feeling of fear has started to go’
“The feeling of fear has now started to go,” said Hani Qusebatuy, 27, on Monday as he joined hundreds of people celebrating in Damascus. “Now the only feeling of fear is the Israeli attacks.”
The United States also launched strikes on Syria this week, with the Pentagon reporting it targeted 75 Islamic State positions on Sunday in the central desert. About 900 American troops remain in Syria, remnants of the forces deployed a decade ago to fight the Islamic State, which sought to establish a “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and Iraq.
Ryan C. Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, warned during a Tuesday event at the Middle East Institute that Israel’s military operations risk “repercussions beyond which the Israelis intend.”
Addressing Israel’s actions in the Golan, Crocker said any prolonged occupation of the area “could add fuel already to a fire.”
“So the Israelis, in presumably taking preemptively defensive moves, need to be very careful that they don’t spark a new militancy directed at them,” he said.