Israel’s military raid into the Syrian village of Beit Jinn near Damascus on Friday was far from an isolated event. After locals resisted and Israel’s soldiers and tanks withdrew, Israeli jets flew over and bombed several buildings, killing 13 people, including two children. Israel later said it was targeting Jamaa al-Islamiya, Lebanon’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Jamaa al-Islamiya replied that it was not active outside Lebanon.
Beit Jinn is not an anomaly, but part of a pattern established over the last 12 months. Since former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow on 8 December 2024 as his soldiers fled their posts, Israeli forces have repeatedly pushed into Syrian territory, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria was no longer valid.
They have seized new ground and launched airstrikes, bombing what little is left of Assad’s old military infrastructure. Yet despite these provocations and breaches of sovereignty, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has repeatedly said that the new Syria does not pose a threat to anyone, including Israel. He has also expressed his willingness to reinstate the disengagement agreement.
Wider considerations
Events in Syria do not only impact Syria. When al-Assad fell, the Iranian-backed militias he had turned a blind eye to also melted away. With Iranian influence waning and Hezbollah wounded in Lebanon, it is now widely agreed that a stable and secure Syria is essential to prevent Iran’s return. Tehran’s proxies are already trying to destabilise Syria, seeking to create the kind of disorder that would allow Iran to re-establish itself.
When Iran held sway over Syria, its militias and agents facilitated the overland transfer of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatened Israel, so analysts might have expected Israel to welcome any government that sought to keep Iran at bay. That has not transpired, however, and Netanyahu seems intent on escalating actions in and against Syria, despite the US and Arab capitals supporting al-Sharaa’s leadership.
Politically vulnerable at home, Netanyahu continues to see a threat from the north and continues to strike Syrian towns from the southern buffer zone that Israel invaded after al-Assad’s fall. What, then, does Netanyahu really want from Damascus, amid talk of a security agreement in the offing between his government and al-Sharaa’s?
