Syrians have shown since December 8, 2024, that they want to rebuild their country, and they want peace. This doesn’t mean everything has gone smoothly
With the ceasefire in the Iran war, Israel has time to take stock of what is changing in the region. One narrative about the US and Israeli war on Iran is that it will redraw the region.
It will do this by weakening the Iranian regime and thus weakening Iran’s backing of proxies. As this happens, Israel’s power will increase, and groups like Hezbollah may be sidelined.
One place that Israel should consider a shift in policy in order to cement the new regional order is Syria. However, it doesn’t appear Israel’s leadership is ready to change its mind on Damascus.
On April 11, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a statement in front of a map of the Middle East. This is the kind of talk that Netanyahu is known for. He likes props and maps.
The map was coded white, red, and blue. The red countries appeared to all be linked to Iran and Iran’s proxy groups. These included Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Gaza. Israel was coded blue and included the West Bank as part of Israel. The other countries were all white.
This does not appear to be a map of the enemy state of Israel. It appears to be a map of the Iranian axis. However, Syria is no longer part of the Iranian axis. On December 8, 2024, the Assad regime fell. At the time, Israeli officials appeared to take credit for helping topple the Assad regime.
However, Israel also launched massive airstrikes in Syria on December 8. The goal was apparently to deny whoever might take over Syria the chance to use Syrian weapons against Israel. Syria was already weakened by a decade of civil war that left much of the country in ruins.
Syria has pushed for peace since fall of Assad
Syrians have shown since December 8, 2024, that they want to rebuild their country, and they want peace. This doesn’t mean everything has gone smoothly. The new government in Damascus opposes Iran and Hezbollah. Iran backed the Assad regime and used Syria to move weapons to Hezbollah. Israel waged what was called the “Campaign Between the Wars” in Syria during the Syrian Civil War.
The goal was to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria. Thousands of strikes targeted Iranian weapons moving to Hezbollah. This had been revealed by former Israel Air Force chief Amir Eshel back in 2017, and former IDF Chief of Staff also discussed it in 2021. As such, it is known that Israel was fighting a quiet conflict against Iran in Syria, using air power.
Hezbollah intervened in Syria to back Assad. It lost hundreds, perhaps thousands of fighters, suppressing the Syrians. As such, the new president of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara’a, knows well the evils of Iran and Hezbollah.
However, Israel has not taken the opportunity to build positive ties with Damascus. Instead, Israeli officials viewed the new government of Syria as unstable, and they called Shara’a a “jihadist.”
Some Israeli officials have even threatened to eliminate Syria’s president over the past year. Part of the anti-Shara’a antics relates to Jerusalem’s claimed desire to support the Druze in southern Syria. However, the support of the Druze having rights in Syria is a policy goal that has no clear discussion about the rest of Syria.
The Druze live in Suwayda, a relatively small area in southern Syria. The Druze are unlikely to create an independent state. Jordan and other countries would oppose this. Also, the Druze are not going to control all of Syria.
In January, the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led SDF created an agreement. This has led Damascus to consolidate control over eastern Syria.
The US, which backed the SDF, has backed the agreement. US officials such as Ambassador Tom Barrack have played a key role. Barrack is the US Envoy to Syria. The US has ended sanctions on Syria, and Syria’s government has been hosting many international delegations, such as Ukraine’s president.
Syria has good relations with countries all around the world and the region. As such, it seems logical that Israel would create warmer ties with Damascus. Syrian officials have indicated they don’t want tensions with Israel. As recently as January, the US, Syria, and Israel had a trilateral meeting.
Syria can be helpful against Hezbollah and also on other issues. The question for Israel is how to get the policy tanker to shift course. Foreign policy is like an oil tanker; it can’t move quickly sometimes. The map used by Israel’s prime minister indicates this. The red coding for Syria is symbolic, and it’s not just a mistake.
Coding Syria as still part of Iran’s axis is a decision. Syria is not linked to Iran today. The map can’t be read any other way. For instance, Afghanistan, which is led by the Taliban, is not coded in red. Neither is Pakistan. The red coding is solely about Iran, not countries that Israel sees as hostile.
Why does Israel see Syria as an enemy when Syria wants warmer ties? What is gained, and who benefits from the tensions? Israel is already at war in Lebanon and has not defeated Hamas in Gaza.
Israel also recently waged a month-and-a-half-long war with Iran. Having Syria closer to Israel’s side in the region would benefit Jerusalem. It would also benefit the Druze in southern Syria by enabling more reasonable discussions, rather than threats and ill-conceived assumptions about what comes next.
The Kurds in eastern Syria have made the pragmatic choice to move toward working with Damascus. Kurdish officials such as Sipan Hemo have become officials of Syria’s Defense Ministry. This is the path forward that is being crafted. There are challenges, of course, but diplomacy generally can smooth the way.
So far, the war in Gaza and Lebanon has not led to a Clausewitz-style political strategic victory for Israel. Syria provides an opportunity. It remains to be seen if that opportunity can be achieved. Changing the symbolic map being used by Israel’s prime minister’s office would be one way to illustrate that symbolic changes are happening.