As Syrians celebrated the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime on Sunday, three foreign powers – Israel, Turkey and the US – carried out airstrikes throughout the country. All three framed the bombings as an attempt to protect their interests after a lightning offensive by rebel fighters triggered Assad’s sudden ouster – and the withdrawal of his two main foreign protectors, Russia and Iran.
In the heady hours after Assad fled to Moscow, thousands of political prisoners were freed from the Baathist regime’s prisons and torture centers. Syrians tore down statues and photos of Assad and his father, Hafez, who took power in 1970 and turned Syria into a police state. All told, father and son had ruled Syria for 54 years. But millions of Syrians barely had time to absorb the fact that the Assad family’s reign had finally ended before it became clear that other outside actors would be jockeying to shape Syria’s future.
Israel moved quickly to capture Syrian territory and destroy much of Syria’s already-decrepit military capabilities. Israeli troops crossed from the occupied Golan Heights on Sunday into adjacent Syrian territory, occupying a demilitarized “buffer zone” that was established by the UN a year after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. By Tuesday, Israel had also carried out more than 350 airstrikes in Syria over the previous 48 hours, destroying the country’s major military assets: old fighter jets, helicopters, drones, naval ships, radar and air-defense systems and missile stockpiles.
Regardless of who ultimately controls a future government in Damascus, Israel exploited the chaos following Assad’s fall to make sure that Syria does not retain the military capacity to defend itself. And Israel did so with the tacit support of Joe Biden and his administration, who repeated Israel’s argument that it was acting pre-emptively in self-defense against potential threats from Syrian rebels and jihadists.
A country invading its neighbor and destroying most of its military within 48 hours would usually be considered an act of aggression under international law. But over the past year, we’ve seen that the international community holds Israel to a different standard from most other countries that might attack their neighbors under the pretext of pre-emptive self-defense. The reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the starkest example of this double standard.
Aside from France and Spain, few western powers condemned Israel’s actions. The UN’s special envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, was among a handful of officials who directly called on Israel to stop its airstrikes and ground invasion into Syrian territory, saying they were in violation of the 1974 ceasefire agreement that created the buffer zone.
Not surprisingly, Biden’s response to Israeli actions in Syria once again exposed his willingness to demolish any semblance of an international rules-based order to protect Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The US administration did what it has done for the past 14 months, since Israel launched its catastrophic war on Gaza after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023: Washington defended Israel and accepted its explanations at face value.
On Monday, the US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, echoed Israel’s excuse for invading its neighbor: as Assad’s regime crumbled, the Syrian army abandoned its positions along the Israeli-Syrian border, Miller said, “which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations”. He added: “Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions.”
Of course, all of this depends on the Netanyahu government’s conception of “temporary”. The Israeli press has cited military officials saying their troops would remain in Syrian territory “for the foreseeable future”. For his part, Netanyahu said this week that the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria and has occupied since the 1967 Middle East war, will remain part of Israel “for eternity”.
Israel unilaterally annexed the territory in 1981, prompting the UN security council to pass a resolution that declared Israel’s annexation “null and void and without international legal effect”. Nearly the entire world does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. In 2019, Donald Trump’s administration recognized the annexation – and the Biden administration did not reverse that decision, despite its consistent criticism of Russia’s invasion and attempts to annex territory in Ukraine.
With less than six weeks before Trump takes office again, Netanyahu is likely hoping that the change in US administration will mean he will have even greater freedom to operate in the Golan and Syria in general. On Monday, Netanyahu publicly thanked his “friend” Trump “for acceding to my request to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019”. He added: “The importance of this historic recognition has been underscored today” – making clear that Trump’s support had paved the way for Netanyahu’s quick decision to send his forces into Syria and destroy its military capabilities.
Israeli officials admitted that they had taken over former Syrian army positions on the highest peak of Jabal al-Sheikh, which Israel calls Mount Hermon. The mountain provides one of the most strategic views to observe large sections of Syria and Lebanon, and it would put Damascus, about 40km away, within range of Israeli artillery. On Friday, the defense minister, Israel Katz, said his troops would keep control of the Syrian side of Mount Hermon through the winter.
Aside from its concern about the impact of Assad’s fall on Israel, the Biden administration mainly views Syria through an anti-terrorism lens, fearing that the Islamic State could reconstitute itself and take advantage of the current power vacuum. On Sunday, after Assad fled Damascus, US warplanes hit more than 75 targets in central Syria, which the Pentagon said were Islamic State camps or operatives. But the US airstrikes were far less extensive and damaging than the ones Israel carried out against Syrian military bases.
The US and European powers want to contain the threat of jihadists attacking western targets, as they did at the height of Syria’s civil war. Washington is also worried that new violence could once again drive scores of refugees out of Syria.
The other major foreign incursions since Assad’s fall have come from Turkey, which has long controlled territory near its southern border through its own proxy, the Syrian national army. Over the past week. Turkey supported this army, an umbrella group of militias, with airstrikes against US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria. Turkey views the Syrian Kurds as a security threat and potential allies to the Kurdish minority inside Turkey.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), another Turkish ally and the strongest of the Syrian rebel factions, which launched a surprise offensive against Assad’s government late last month, has taken control of Damascus and other major cities. The US, the UK and most European countries designated HTS a terrorist group due to its past affiliation with al-Qaida during Syria’s civil war. Some western powers, along with the UN, are now considering removing the terrorist designation if HTS commits to forming an inclusive transitional government.
HTS and other rebel groups have a herculean task in consolidating the patchwork of Syrian factions into a cohesive government that can manage sectarian and ethnic splits until a new constitution is drafted and elections can be held.
They must also fight against Assad’s legacy and foreign interference. Aside from his sheer brutality – the war killed nearly 500,000 people and displaced nearly half of Syria’s population – Assad was able to hold onto power by leveraging a destructive foreign policy that nurtured proxies in neighboring countries and exported extremism.
At the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Assad’s regime released hundreds of Islamic militants from its prisons, and they went on to become leaders of Islamic State and other jihadist factions. Assad then portrayed himself as the only one capable of keeping Syria’s army and other state institutions from disintegrating and preventing the country from falling entirely to jihadists. To the west, Assad projected himself as the lesser evil – even if his regime was responsible for greater death and destruction than his opponents.
While Syria has finally been freed from Assad’s rule, along with his foreign backers, other powers – especially Israel, the US and Turkey – are now vying for influence as Syrians grapple with how to rebuild their devastated country. Syrians deserve to no longer be pawns in the ambitions and conflicts of others.
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Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University
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