Israel wary of Syrian rebels who overthrew the Assad regime in Syria: “It’s the unknown!”

Published on December 10, 2024 at 7:53 p.m. / Modified on December 11, 2024 at 08:48.

4 mins. reading

Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime as “a major event”. But above all, as “the direct consequence of the severe blows [portés par Israël] to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. A conclusion widely relayed by the Jewish state’s military experts. Sarit Zehavi, director of the Alma think tank on security issues in northern Israel, lives not far from the Lebanese and Syrian borders. She believes that the Syrian rebels were able to overthrow Bashar al-Assad because his main ally on the ground, Hezbollah, “had lost its most important militias following Israeli attacks, and was therefore very weakened. This gave them the confidence to attack the regime.”

This analysis is nevertheless tempered by certain experts in the region. Like Jacques Neriah, former foreign affairs advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who judges that it is rather the result of “a combination of circumstances”. “Yes, Hezbollah was weakened. But it was above all because the Russians were busy in the Ukrainian theater, and because Iran was taken by surprise, and was unable to react to the events in Syria, that the collapse of the regime took place. , details the man who is now a researcher at the Center for Security and Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem.

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