America Has a New Ally in Syria and Wants Israel to Get on Board

TEL AVIV—Israel's aggressive posture toward the new government in Syria has emerged as a rare point of disagreement with Washington, where President Trump wants a quick resolution to the two countries' decades-old tensions.

After the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime a year ago, Israel carved out a 155-square-mile area inside Syria that it still holds. Since then, it has carried out arrests, seized weapons and conducted frequent airstrikes in the south of the country. Over the summer, Israel struck Syria's military headquarters in Damascus in what it said was an effort to defend the Druze minority, which has strong ties to Israel, from sectarian attacks.

Trump, urged by regional allies including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, has lifted sanctions on new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. He has praised the former jihadist as a “young, attractive guy,” and a “fighter,” who is “doing a good job.”

Discord between Israel and Syria has been a point of frustration for Washington, which has generally supported Israel in its wars with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. The U.S. is brokering talks on a security agreement between Syria and Israel that could lay the groundwork for a long-term peace, but they appear stalled. Amid a Gaza cease-fire and a new push to end fighting in Ukraine, Trump is calling on Israel to do that deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contends that such an agreement is possible only if Syria accepts the demilitarization of land stretching from southern Damascus to the Israeli border—a demand rejected by Sharaa, who argues it would create a security vacuum in southern Syria.

Israel took a lesson from the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks from Gaza that it can't bargain away its security interests to please its neighbors or even Washington. It now sees U.S.-supported withdrawals from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000 as mistakes that allowed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah to prepare launchpads for cross-border attacks.

“It's easy to take the risk when you're in Washington, but when you're in the Golan Heights it's much more risky. It's too close,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser.

Trump hasn't openly criticized Israel for its Syria policy, but has made clear what he wants. “It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria,” he wrote in a Truth Social post earlier this month, “and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria's evolution into a prosperous State.”

The diverging views over the new Syria demonstrate the risks run by Israel's military posture since the Oct. 7 attacks, when thousands of militants poured into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage.

The Israeli security establishment blames Israel's inability to foresee the Hamas-led attacks on the country's failure to thwart threats along its borders. Instead, it allowed Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon to build up, believing the groups would never burst across the border en masse.

Since reaching a cease-fire with Hezbollah in November 2024, Israel has kept a military presence inside Lebanon near its border, and has carried out near daily airstrikes it says are aimed at foiling attempts by the Lebanese militia to rearm.

But even in Israel, some former generals and security experts worry that Netanyahu is overreaching in regard to neighboring Syria, threatening Israel's relationship with its most important ally, the U.S., and creating an image more broadly as a regional belligerent.

“The risk in Syria is lower than anywhere else. If you want Trump to be on your side on so many things that are more important and dangerous, this is the coin you need to pay with,” said Avner Golov, a former senior director at Israel's National Security Council.

He argues for a quick compromise on a security agreement with Syria to allow Syrian forces to patrol areas near its border but prohibit the presence of heavy weapons or Turkish troops. Israel, he said, needs to go from “projecting military power to creating diplomatic power.”

Trump hopes to bring Syria into the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and a handful of Muslim-majority countries he helped broker in his first term. Israeli, Syrian and U.S. officials have said it's too early for that, and that first both sides need to agree on security. That would likely resemble a previous 1974 nonaggression pact that established a demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries.

Tom Barrack, Trump's envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey, said that Syria's government is fulfilling Washington's requests regarding Israel, but that the Israelis aren't reciprocating.

“Everything we ask them to do, and dragging them towards Israel, they're doing it,” Barrack said of Syria, in an interview with the Emirati newspaper the National published Friday. “Israel is not trusting yet, so it's a little bit slower,” he added.

Israel and Syria have fought three wars and been in conflict since Israel's establishment in 1948, but haven't been in direct conflict since 1973.

While the border between Israel and Syria was one of Israel's quietest fronts while Assad was in power, the Syrian dictator was a close ally of Israel's greatest regional foe, Iran.

Assad allowed Tehran to build up a proxy force on Israel's border and to smuggle weapons via Syria to Hezbollah, which in turn helped the Assad regime suppress its internal enemies.

The new Syrian president and his followers are conservative Sunnis who oppose Shiite-led Iran. But Israel remains suspicious of the administration, many of whose members were part of al Qaeda, which opposes the existence of Israel.

Israel is also skeptical Sharaa can stitch together Syria's patchwork of ethnicities, sects and religions, given immense rifts that have turned violent over the past year between the Sunni majority and minority sects including Alawites, Kurds and Druze.

In Syria, the U.S. and the Middle East, many view Israel as acting to keep Syria weak and divided along ethnic lines, undermining their efforts to help Sharaa unite the country.

While Israel drags out diplomatic negotiations with Syria, bouts of fighting have erupted between the two countries.

In late November, Israeli forces entered the town of Beit Jinn, less than 10 miles from the border with Israel, to arrest two suspected militants. The ensuing firefight left at least 13 Syrians dead, and six Israeli soldiers injured, according to Israeli's military and Syrian state TV.

That night, Syrians in Damascus gathered to celebrate the first anniversary of the fall of Assad, during which some people burned Israeli flags.

This week, Israel raised concerns with the U.S. about videos on social media that appeared to show Syrian military marching through streets of Damascus, as part of anniversary celebrations, chanting in support of Gaza and apparently threatening Israel. An Israeli official said Israel asked the U.S. to request Syria to denounce those chants, according to an Israeli official.

“There's clearly an escalating line and a much more hawkish tone toward Israel in recent weeks,” emanating from Damascus, said Carmit Valensi, head of the Syria program at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based think tank.

Speaking in Qatar over the weekend, Sharaa denounced as dangerous Israel's expansion of its buffer zone, accused it of trying to evade responsibility for what he referred to as “horrific massacres” in Gaza and needlessly raising the specter of another Oct. 7-style attack across its borders.

“Israel has become a country that is in a fight against ghosts,” Sharaa said.

William Wechsler, senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said he met recently with senior government officials in Damascus who he said expressed openness to working with Israel to focus on other problems they face, including sectarian violence. The window for this partnership is closing, and Israel's aggressive stance is pushing Syria closer into the arms of Turkey, a backer of Sharaa and an Israeli foe, said Wechsler.

“If the goal of Israel is to self isolate, then it's on the right track,” Wechsler said.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

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Source: Hindustan Times
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