Did you ever get really excited about something and then realize it might not be exactly as you thought? It happens.
Last week, the government of Syria released a new map, which, interestingly/oddly/remarkably, did not include the Golan Heights as Syrian territory. There was an immediate burst of giddy enthusiasm among Israel’s friends. For some, it was the fulfillment of their hopes that the Syrian government under Ahmed al-Sharaa was willing to live peacefully beside Israel. And there is some suggestion that U.S. President Donald Trump pushed him to do it to obviate Israeli incursions into Syrian territory.
Indeed, Israeli journalist and political analyst Amit Segal reported prior to the release of the image:
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are playing games with us once again. Yesterday, the president publicly warned Israel’s prime minister not to “interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State.” His officials, meanwhile, are leaking to reporters that “Bibi is seeing ghosts everywhere,” and that if he doesn’t stop the IDF strikes in Syria, “he will self-destruct.”
Segal believes that it is a feint.
I believe he and Netanyahu are coordinating a specific security development. While it’s hard to say exactly what, if I had to guess, my money would be on Netanyahu trying to get American permission for a significant operation in Iran, Syria or Lebanon.
Syria is a wreck, not a country. It is at war with various internal communities and a passageway for Iranian arms moving to Lebanon from Iraq. Trump did, in fact, come close to Segal’s view in November, when he warned Lebanon to advance the disarmament of Hezbollah. To the extent that the Lebanese government can’t or won’t, Israel is, according to the ceasefire language, entitled to continue to remove Hezbollah assets.
In late November, Israeli forces, operating in southern Syria, captured two operatives of the Islamic Jamaa, a Sunni terror organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. The group is headquartered in Lebanon but operates against Israel through cells in Syria. According to a report in World Israel News, Jerusalem has carried out multiple operations in southern Syria.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad has also been inserting itself in Syria, presumably to attack Israel.
And in the northern part of the country, fighting between the Syrian government and Kurdish militias has ebbed and flowed, as the Kurdish SDF militia, an ally of the United States, agreed to integrate into the Syrian Army, even though both sides clearly have reservations. Last week, fighting broke out in Aleppo and was followed by a ceasefire.
News sources citing the Syrian defense ministry reported that the SDF had launched a sudden attack on government forces. The SDF denied that and said the attack was carried out by factions affiliated with the Syrian government and Turkey. HTS, the ruling clique in Damascus, is Sunni, ISIS-adjacent, Al Qaeda-adjacent, and armed by and aligned with Turkey’s increasingly Islamist government. Turkey is a historic foe of the Kurds.
The United States has forces in northern Syria, near the Turkish-influenced area, in part to protect our Kurdish allies. Washington reserves the right to retaliate in Syria for attacks on U.S. troops, which it did two weeks ago in a series of 70 strikes following an ISIS attack that killed two U.S. servicemen and a translator.
Enough yet?
Israel has a long and close relationship with Syria’s Druze community—family to the large, patriotic Israeli Druze community. During the Syrian civil war, Israel provided humanitarian and medical aid to Syrian Druze in the south. Last year, when al-Sharaa’s forces attacked the Druze, Israel defended them militarily and worked to create a humanitarian corridor. Syrian troops have again attacked Druze positions near the Israeli border. (For an in-depth look at the situation of the Druze across three borders, see this inFOCUS interview with Tamir Murad, an advisor to the spiritual leader of the Druze community.)
Now, consider the map. Is this a decision by Syria (and/or Trump?) to take Israel out of the fractious Syrian battle zone?
The U.S. president is heavily invested in a peaceful future for Syria under the current government. Enough to encourage al-Sharaa to make Israel an offer? You can almost hear them: “Don’t you want Syria to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan? Do you want war with Syria over people who are not your citizens? You can’t keep attacking Syria and expect us to agree to your territorial terms, so stop firing at them.”
They would not be entirely wrong, and Israel is al-Sharaa’s most potent foe. It would be a trade-off. Removing Israel from the battlefield would help the government in Damascus enormously—at the cost of the Druze. Trump could point out that Damascus did not attack Israel, just Israel’s partners, the Druze.
While one can hope the map is a harbinger of better days, it is too soon to stop calculating the risks. For Israel and for its allies, the Druze.
