Sümeyye Gannuşi
Israel’s strategies reach far beyond borders or minorities. Its vision for Syria is one of permanent fragmentation
On Tuesday, a chilling declaration echoed from Tel Aviv. Speaking to a gathering of supporters, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proclaimed: “The fighting will not end until hundreds of thousands of Gazans leave… and Syria is partitioned.”
His words, captured and spread across social media, stripped away any remaining pretenses. Israel’s wars are not about “security” or “terrorism”. They are about redrawing the map itself- shattering nations, displacing peoples, and rewriting history.
Earlier in April, Israeli warplanes once more tore through Syrian skies, unleashing a torrent of missiles on military sites and civilian neighborhoods alike.
The strikes swept from central airbases to the deep south, where Israeli ground forces carved an incision near the city of Nawa, killing nine civilians.
The official Israeli narrative, as ever, spoke of “defence” and “pre-emption”. But the truth, heavy with meaning, was deeper than geography or politics – it was an incursion into memory itself.
For in targeting Nawa, Israel did not merely strike a town. It violated a sanctuary of Muslim heritage and intellectual history. Nawa is the birthplace of Imam al-Nawawi, one of the most revered scholars in Islamic civilization, whose works echo across centuries and continents.
It was there that he committed the Quran to memory, rejecting the bustle of trade for the serenity of learning. His name is still uttered with reverence in homes, schools, and pulpits from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur. To bomb this city is to bomb a lineage of wisdom.
Not far from Nawa rises Tell al-Jabiyah, where Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab once stood, having journeyed from Madinah to receive the keys of Jerusalem. There, on that ancient hill, he met his commanders in the hour before a historic handover. Their footsteps still echo in the soil of Houran. It is sacred ground – hallowed not only by faith, but by the weight of history.
To the south and east lie the homelands of other towering minds. Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, the great jurist and theologian, hailed from the town of Izraa in Daraa. Ibn Kathir, the famed historian of Al-Bidaya wal-Nihaya, was born in the village of Majdal near Bosra.
This region, Houran, has long been a wellspring of scholarship, its soil nourishing a civilisation that stretched beyond borders, sects, and empires.
And it was here too, by the banks of the Yarmouk River, that Khalid ibn al-Walid led Muslim forces in 636 AD to a momentous victory against the Byzantines – shattering imperial rule and opening a new chapter in the history of the world.
A land of resistance, conquest and revival
To wage war on this land is not merely to violate sovereignty. It is to challenge the very essence of Arab and Islamic continuity. The soil of Houran is not passive terrain – it is a witness to centuries of resistance, conquest, and revival.
Israel’s attacks, then, are not only physical – they are symbolic. They are not merely about military dominance. They are about erasure.
Since the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, Israel has waged its most intense campaign on Syrian territory in years. Hundreds of air strikes have decimated military infrastructure, air defence systems, and arms depots.
The justification offered is simple: Israel does not trust the new transitional government. Yet, the scope and timing of the strikes betray something deeper. Just one day after Assad fled to Moscow, Israeli leaders declared their intention to carve out a “sterile security zone” inside Syrian territory, stretching some 400 square kilometres – more than the entire area of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces have now taken positions along the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, in open defiance of international law. And while officials initially hinted at the temporality of the occupation, they have since dropped the mask.
There is no time limit. No exit plan.
“We will remain”, declared Defence Minister Israel Katz, standing atop the mountain. “We will ensure that the entire southern zone is demilitarised, and we will not tolerate threats to the Druze community.”
Thus begins the performance – the invocation of minority protection. Israel claims to shield the Druze from imagined threats posed by the new Syrian leadership. But history exposes the hollowness of such claims.
Hollow claims
The Druze in Palestine, long enlisted in the Israeli army, have bled for the state they hoped would treat them as equals. These are the Druze of the Galilee, formally Israeli citizens, who answered the state’s call to service – only to find themselves treated as second-class citizens in their own homeland.
Yet, the betrayal has been systematic. Discrimination in housing, education, land ownership, and political recognition runs deep. A 2024 report by Israel’s leading think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), warned: “If Israel continues to ignore the problems facing the Druze community, its members will feel a sense of abandonment, which could potentially jeopardize their relationship with the state.”
The passing of the 2018 Nation-State Law, enshrining Israel as a Jewish state and relegating non-Jews to permanent inferiority, was a breaking point for many. The “covenant of blood”, once touted with pride, has become a bitter epitaph.
Druze homes face demolition. Druze protests fill the streets. And still, Israel presents itself as their saviour in Syria – even as it fails them in their own homeland. The same is true for the Bedouins – Arab citizens who serve in the Israeli occupation army, only to return to villages deemed illegal, their homes marked for destruction.
This is not protection. It is exploitation, draped in the language of concern.
In truth, Israel’s ambitions reach far beyond borders or minorities. Its vision for Syria is one of permanent fragmentation.
Just one day after Assad’s flight, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar bluntly declared that Syria should no longer exist as a unified state. He called for autonomous zones – cantons for every community. “The idea of a single sovereign Syria is unrealistic,” he said.
More explicitly, Israeli lawyer and military lecturer Rami Simani proclaimed: “Syria is an artificial state that has disintegrated. It has never had a real right to exist. It is not an Arab state, and certainly not a nation-state of anyone… Erdogan supports a united Syria. Israel’s interest is completely the opposite. Israel can and must cause Syria to disappear. In its place will be five cantons… Israel must deepen its grip on the interior of Syria.”
This is not mere rhetoric. It is policy.
A shattered Syria
Israel envisions a fractured Syria: a Kurdish canton in the northeast, a Druze protectorate in the south, an Alawite enclave hugging the coast, and scattered Sunni territories stripped of sovereignty.
The goal is not peace. It is paralysis.
A shattered Syria cannot resist the occupation of its lands. A divided Syria cannot speak for Palestine.
A federalised Syria cannot dream of independence. And so, under the pretext of “security”, Israel deepens its footprint. But its gaze is cast beyond Syria – toward Turkey.
While Ankara has repeatedly vowed to avoid confrontation, Israeli strategists now regard it as a greater threat than Iran.
Turkey supports a unified Syria. Israel supports its dissolution.
The early April strikes, including those near Nawa, carried a message – not only to Damascus, but to Ankara: This is our sphere of influence.
The silence from Damascus has been notable. The new Syrian leadership, still unsteady, has issued only cautious responses. Some officials even floated the idea of peace. “We are committed to the 1974 agreement,” said Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, “and will not allow Syrian soil to be used for attacks.”
In a further overture, Sharaa reportedly told a US lawmaker that Syria is prepared to normalise ties with Israel and join the Abraham Accords under the “right conditions”, seeking sanctions relief and a resolution to the Israeli occupation of southwestern Syria. Sharaa has since denied that Syria could normalise ties with Israel while it remains occupied.
Yet, these gestures were met not with diplomacy, but with more bombs – and with declarations that erased any pretence of compromise.
In a speech to Israeli military cadets, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would not allow either Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces or the new Syrian army to “enter the area south of Damascus”.
He demanded the complete demilitarisation of the provinces of Quneitra, Daraa, and Sweida, and warned that Israel would “not tolerate any threat to the Druze community in southern Syria”.
Israel’s position is unmistakable: there is no room for Syrian sovereignty.
Impossible demands
In Washington, Israel lobbies for the tightening of sanctions. US officials now present Damascus with a list of impossible demands – among them, the banning of all Palestinian political activity on Syrian soil.
A nation reeling from 14 years of war is told it must sacrifice not only its independence, but its alliances, its memory, its voice.
Yet something is stirring in Syria.
The funeral of the nine slain in Nawa became a procession of defiance. Across the country, Syrians poured into the streets.
The fatigue of war is giving way to a new resolve. A generation that once lost hope is finding it again – not in governments, but in the land itself.
Because Syria is not merely a state – it is a civilisation. It is the cradle of empires, the graveyard of invaders. It endured the Crusades, repelled colonialism, and rose against tyranny.
Its wounds are many, but its spirit endures. The enemy may be powerful. But the land remembers.
Israel’s strategy, for all its calculation, is built on a fatal illusion: that a nation can be erased by redrawing maps and dropping bombs. But Syria is not just territory. It is Nawa and Yarmouk, Ibn Kathir and Saladin, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash and Khalid ibn al-Walid.
It is history made flesh, dignity engraved in the soil. Syria will not disappear. It will not fragment quietly. And its people, however battered, are awakening.
What Israel has unleashed in southern Syria is not submission, it is remembrance.
For Syrians and Palestinians, the struggle is shared, the wound is one.
And history – long witness to the rise and fall of empires – remains on their side.
Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. A selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and she tweets @SMGhannoushi.
Source:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-syria-break-up-faith-history-resistance-defeat-it
