Within a year, Israel went from imagining Syria entering the Abraham Accords (i.e. recognition of the Israeli state by a neighbor with which it has fought three wars since its birth in 1948) to increasing threats and even contemplating an inevitable new war conflict.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has already begun to change its tune and add demands to the security agreement it has been negotiating with Damascus for months and which has reached a dead end, two months after the US envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, saw it very close to it. But the recent military incursion into a Syrian village, which turned into a bloodbath, further strained relations and increased pessimism.
On Friday, Israeli forces entered Beit Jinn, a village located between the capital and the Syrian region that Israel occupied a year ago, to arrest three. In a rare incident, local youths surprised the soldiers by opening fire. Six soldiers were injured (three of them seriously), while Israel killed 13 people, including two children, in subsequent bombings. This was one of the most serious incidents since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime a year ago. Damascus described it as a “war crime.”
Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating Anti-Semitism, Amijay Shekli, is not among those who decide the main strategic issues in Israel, but he often says only what others think. He added fuel to the fire this Sunday with a message on social networks in which he described the ambush in Beit Jinn as “the beginning of a new era,” because the Israeli army had never faced “organized resistance of this magnitude” in one of its regular incursions into Syria.
He concluded that “Damascus in 2025 is like Gaza in 2008 (the year of the Cast Lead attack), but on much more difficult terrain,” and that Israel has as a neighbor “a new enemy state, with an army, economy, and strategic alliances,” forcing the armed and security forces to “prepare appropriately.”
Shikli added, “The invasion of Mount Hermon (on the Syrian side) and the buffer zone (the new strip occupied in 2024) was a vital step, but it is necessary to understand that the Syrian front is very likely to become a major war zone.”
Before the deadly incident in Beit Jinn, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz was particularly pessimistic in a closed meeting of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Thursday, according to public radio. He stressed that his country “is not on the path” to a peace or security agreement with Damascus, and that it is in fact preparing for the possibility of soldiers or militia members attacking the Druze minority, which has used its defense as a banner to justify its interventions.
The minister even spoke of a possible ground incursion against the Golan Heights, which is under Israeli control, by armed groups, including the Houthis in Yemen. Neither Israel nor other countries’ intelligence agencies had ever found them in Syria before.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained silent since the incident. He fears, on the one hand, that it will generate an escalation with Turkey (the main support for the new Syrian authorities, whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, understands Donald Trump well), and, on the other hand, that it will annoy the American president, according to the newspaper. Yedioth Ahronoth.
Trump made history this month, hosting Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new president of Syria. He was the first head of state in the history of Syria to set foot in the White House. The United States even offered ten million dollars (nine million euros) for him because, years before Assad was ousted a year ago and his real name was restored, he joined the local branch of Al Qaeda, with Al-Julani as his nom de guerre.
However, on the 17th, when he held a hearing in one of his corruption cases – for which he requested a presidential pardon on Sunday – Netanyahu chose to travel to the part of Syria under Israeli military control to fan the drums of war. He said: “We attach great importance to our capabilities here, both defensive and offensive, to protect our Druze allies, and in particular, the State of Israel and its northern borders facing the Golan Heights. This mission can change at any time, but we are counting on you.”
Netanyahu official sends contradictory messages to Sharaa. On the one hand, he called for dialogue, and even indicated the imminent establishment of diplomatic relations. On the other hand, it occupies more Syrian territory (it has already done so in the Golan Heights since the Six-Day War in 1967), determines by bombing the limits of the deployment of the national army and calls it “the jihadist in the suit.” Moreover, he modified his rhetoric: from presenting Islamist militias as the main threat to focusing on the new authorities.
Not only did Israel exploit the confusion at the end of the war to gain more territory in Syria, it also destroyed almost the entire strategic capabilities of its armed forces, in a wave of bombings unprecedented in the Middle East outside of times of war.
It set up a checkpoint and established eight military sites, most of them in the demilitarized zone. It also carries out ground raids in the border provinces and even on the outskirts of Damascus. It threatens to bomb any Syrian army deployment south of the capital.