Israeli warplanes struck near Syria’s presidential palace in Damascus before dawn Friday, in the most direct brushback to the former Islamist rebels who now run the country.
There were no immediate reports of damage, but the message was clear. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a warning to the government not to deploy troops to the south, in the direction of Israel, and to prevent violence against the Druze minority living in the area.
The strike followed a string of deadly clashes this week in southern Syria that involved Druze militias, government forces and extremist elements, and which have put new pressure on a nascent government trying to prevent the country from fragmenting along sectarian lines.
Israel added to an already complex situation by joining the fighting midweek, striking what it said were operatives near Damascus who had attacked Syrian Druze. It upped the ante early Friday with the strike near the presidential palace.
“I think the importance is clear,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of research for Israeli military intelligence and now the director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a think tank based in Israel. “We expect that the forces of the regime will not deploy in areas that threaten either us or the Druze community, that’s why we want southern Syria to be vacant.”
Syria’s Druze population—which practices a closely held religion that is an early offshoot of Islam and has close ties to Druze in Israel—has worried since the Assad regime was overthrown in December that Syria’s government of former jihadists can’t be trusted to keep them safe.
Israel also has concerns about Syria’s new government and has tried to woo the country’s Druze population with promises of aid, jobs in Israel and protection.
But the Druze are split over the question of Israeli help. While some say they want to secede from Syria and be annexed by Israel, the majority have denounced any such moves. Since February, crowds of Druze lawyers, doctors and other professionals have demonstrated in the streets, calling for unity with the country’s new leaders.
Other protests have condemned the government, and there are Druze militias on both sides of the issue.
At one antigovernment protest in March, two doctors who disagreed with the protesters’ demands watched from the street, their faces grim.
“This has been done by mercenaries, paid by those trying to divide us,“ said Mounir Al-Shaar, referring to Israel’s intervention. “We do not agree with them.”
Syria’s new government, led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, grew out of a rebel group once linked to Al-Qaeda. It has sworn off those ties and promised to respect the country’s many religious and ethnic groups, but it is regarded warily by many of those groups, a number of Arab governments, the U.S. and Israel.
After the Assad regime fell, Israeli forces seized control of Syria’s southern border areas and demanded that the government keep its forces out. Israel also launched waves of attacks that wiped out much of the old Syrian military’s armaments.
While Israel has been open in its disdain for the new government, striking near the presidential palace was a new escalation.
“The Syrian regime is still, as far as we’re concerned, under probation,” said Eran Lerman, a former deputy national security adviser for Israel also now at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
