Syria: The grim reality behind the celebration

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani addresses a crowd at the landmark Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on December 8. AFP

The crisis unfolding in Syria is indeed a major geopolitical quake, the likes of which the Middle East has not seen since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the balkanisation of the region into more than a dozen nation-states some 105 years ago in keeping with the Western imperialists’ sinister design to divide and rule the Arabs.

After the ouster of the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad, the tectonic plates beneath the Middle East are shifting, creating a new reality—a new political landscape. 

If one were to apply the criminal investigators’ follow-the-motive approach to determine who might have benefitted from the crime, it becomes easy to identify the architects behind the Syrian regime-change project: Israel, the country that is most benefiting from the fall of the Assad regime. 

Israel seized on the opportunity in the chaotic aftermath of the ouster of the Assad regime to grab more Syrian territory in pursuance of its Eretz Israel or Greater Israel dream. Already, it has annexed Syria’s Golan Heights, which it captured in the 1967 war. The illegal annexation has won the immoral recognition of the US, the diehard defender of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the morally most unfit big power to be a global leader.

After last Sunday’s fall of the Assad regime, Israel captured the Golan Heights buffer zone established in 1974 following a United Nations resolution and moved beyond it, bringing under its control the strategic Quneitra Heights and Qatana. Moreover, Israel carried out more than 400 airstrikes this week, destroying Syria’s military assets, including fighter jets, naval craft, and military bases in what it boasts as the most intense airstrikes in its military history.

Mark our words: Israel will not hand over the newly captured territories to a new Syrian government when stability returns. To sting is the nature of the scorpion. The nature of Israel is to grab and annex other people’s land. Israel has justified the capture of the Syrian territory by invoking the right to defend itself. If this is Israel’s logic, where does it stop? Not until it conquers the entire Middle East and even Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not until Israel brings under its control the entire world of the Gentiles.

The new Syria that is emerging is being parcelled out among regime-change architects. Israel is taking a big chunk and has succeeded in dismantling the Iran-led Shiite Crescent—a territorially contiguous line connecting Iran, Iraq, Syria, and South Lebanon controlled by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. The fall of the Assad regime is a big blow to Iran, the Palestinian cause, and the axis of resistance against Israel. 

The Zionist state’s immediate goal is to set up in truncated Syria a puppet regime beholden to Israel so that it will cede the Golan Heights to Israel. International law bars an occupying power from selling the resources of an occupied nation, but once Syria secedes the Golan Heights, Israel will be able to sell the Golan oil and gas in the international market.

It is not only Israel that is into land grabs. Turkey is holding on to parts of the Syrian territory along the border, justifying its action on security grounds. The Kurds are trying to form their statelet with the help of the US, their ally during the Syrian civil war, though Washington’s NATO ally Turkey is determined to vanquish them to weaken the Kurdish separatism within Turkey. The result is Syria is being balkanised in keeping with Zionism’s vision of enfeebling the Arab nations. 

The Syrian civil war was not autochthonous. It was engineered by interested outside parties, the same forces that effected the regime change in Libya and had Muammar Gaddafi killed. The decision to get rid of the Bashar al-Assad regime was taken after Syria rejected a Saudi-Qatari pipeline proposal to send Middle Eastern oil and gas to Europe via Turkey. The pipeline project posed a geopolitical threat to Russia’s domination of the European energy market. Russian companies met about 60 percent of Europe’s energy needs. Assad rejected the project following opposition from Russia and Iran, Syria’s closest allies.

Syria’s new rulers, a coalition led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the Committee for the Liberation of the Levant—have neither the political will nor the military assets to fight Israel, while a dominant faction within the group is more interested in establishing a Sunni fundamentalist regime under which, it is feared, the minorities—Shiites, the Christians, and the Alawites—will be oppressed not because they supported the Assad regime but because they are considered ‘others.’

Not many media outlets are telling us that the Syrian rebels who toppled the Assad regime got their weapons from Israel. A January 14, 2019-dated Times of Israel article quoted the outgoing Israel Defence Forces chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, as acknowledging, for the first time, that Israel had been providing weapons to the Syrian rebels. 

During the campaign to oust Assad, Israel acted as the air force of the rebels and evacuated wounded rebels, including al-Qaeda-affiliated members, to be treated in Israeli hospitals. So expecting Syria’s new rulers to fight Israel and retake Syria’s lost territories is wishful thinking, though in a video clip during the victory celebrations this week, some jihadis who were part of the anti-Assad coalition were vowing to fight Israel to liberate Palestine and bring Jerusalem under the control of Muslims. 

The regime change is an Israeli-American project that had the support of regional players, each trying to achieve its geopolitical and geo-economic objectives. For the US, the Syrian project was about weakening Iran. For President-elect Trump, the US is in Syria to steal its oil. “Do you know what I did? I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil; they are protecting the oil,” Trump said during a January 2020 interview with Fox News.

Despite its jihadi credentials, the government being formed in Syria appears to be pro-Israel. The grim reality is that the men who are running the new setup are al-Qaeda affiliates. Those who follow the Syrian civil war know how Al-Qaeda in Syria was part of the global jihadi movement led by al-Qaeda global leader Ayman al Zawahiri, the successor to Osama bin Laden. With the West getting militarily involved in the civil war, the group colluded with the West and underwent name changes to mask its al-Qaeda identity and finally emerged as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (THS) under the leadership of Abu Muhammad al-Julani to capture Damascus and declare victory. 

In 2013, the US listed al-Julani as a “specially designated global terrorist, and four years later announced a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture. It is not clear how the US would deal with Syria’s HTS-controlled interim regime. 

As the dust began to settle in Syria after days of celebrations amid chaos, Syrians are beginning to worry about the future. To sum up, let me quote Middle Eastern affairs commentator Bassam Youssef. In an X post, he says, “The Syrians are finally starting to ask and look for logic. Does anyone know who al-Julani is? What is his nationality, family, and roots? Where was he? Where did he suddenly come from? Neither his name is Golani nor even Ahmed Al-Sharaa; these are all nicknames. Imagine you wake up in the morning to find that an anonymous man is running your country. It’s madness.”

The worst is yet to come.