Israel’s military strikes against Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Syrian regime – hitting the Defense Ministry headquarters and a compound near the presidential palace in Damascus – represent the most severe Israeli military response to Syria’s regime in decades, including under the 50-year rule of the Assad family dictatorship. But Israel’s unprecedented military strikes are not without context.
The massacre of civilians in the Druze town of Suwayda and the subsequent U.S.-brokered cease-fire provides a moment for reflection: this so-called “sectarian violence” as it is known in the West, is, more accurately, an ongoing jihad by Marxism-influenced Islamist warriors committing atrocities, they claim, in the name of Islam and the prophet Mohammed. Their vigilante violence owes more to Marxism and power than it does to Islam as understood by the religious authorities in today’s Saudi Arabia or the UAE. That is the fault line of the Middle East today and where al-Sharaa chooses for Syria will determine his future.
Israel, as the strongest minority community in the Arab Muslim majority Middle East, is making a bold statement. Israel, as the region’s “strong horse,” is setting a new post-October 7 standard of response and more consequentially, prevention of jihadis’ deadly regional agenda. No less important, Israel has conveyed a message of the Jewish state’s reliability in its act of protecting the 170,000 Israeli Druze minority including those living in Israel’s Golan Heights.
Why has Israel chosen to respond with such ferocity in response to the massacre of scores of the Syrian Druze community in Suwayda? The answer reveals both immediate security imperatives and the broader strategic calculus governing Israeli decision-making in the post-October 7 era.
Israel is committed to protecting its Druze citizens and its extended family in Syria, particularly in the Druze Mountains and Suwayda, driven by shared minority identity, and moral obligation. Hundreds of Syrian Druze have been massacred by Sunni Bedouin tribe members supported by Islamic operatives of the Syrian regime. Historical tensions between the Druze and Syria’s Sunni Arab majority, worsened by Druze modus vivendi with the Assad regime, have led to revenge attacks by Sunni groups like HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist militant group formerly linked to al-Qaeda, aiming to establish an Islamic state in Syria) after Assad’s fall, prompting Israeli military intervention to protect the Druze and maintain a jihadist-free buffer zone.
Israel’s negotiations with Syria for security arrangements are complicated by its airstrikes defending the Druze, which risk collapsing the new non-belligerence by Syria’s new leadership, potentially hindering détente despite the strategic advantage of Druze presence in the buffer zone.
Regional Message: Minority Protection as Strategic Imperative
Israel’s tough response is also a reflection of morale-politique, its own history of suffering genocide. The Iran-backed Hamas massacre on October 7, through the Iranian regime’s repeated ballistic missile attacks on Israeli towns and cities, have only strengthened Israel’s determination to prevent mass atrocities of other regional friendly minorities. This commitment extends to Israel’s protecting its extended Druze family, whether those living in Israel or on the other side of the border in Syria. In a region where today’s ally could become tomorrow’s genocidal enemy, Israel’s security depends on establishing clear red lines around minority persecution.
The Border Threat
The catalyst for Israel’s action was not the Suwayda violence alone, but what it could trigger on Israel’s northern border with Syria both from Syrian-based terror groups streaming southward, while preventing hundreds from Israel’s Druze community from storming the border fence and crossing into Syria, creating a potentially catastrophic security crisis.
This was a breach of Israel’s fortified northern border, with Israeli citizens placing themselves in an active conflict zone. The specter of Israeli Druze being killed or kidnapped in Syria while Israeli forces watched represents precisely a scenario that governments cannot survive politically. When ethnic solidarity transcends borders, states face an impossible choice: allow citizens to place themselves in mortal danger, or act decisively to eliminate the crisis source. Israel chose action. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s urgent broadcast warning to Israeli Druze leaders on July 17 underscores the point.
The October 7 Doctrine: Prevention Over Reaction
Israel’s response also reflects its evolving national security doctrine element of prevention following Hamas’s October 7 massacre. The cardinal lesson: Israel can no longer afford to wait for threats to materialize before acting decisively.
The new Israeli approach prioritizes prevention over reaction, preemption over containment. When violence threatens to spill into Israeli territory or endanger Israeli citizens, the default response has become decisive intervention to eliminate threats at their source. This represents a fundamental shift. The old doctrine of “quiet for quiet” died on October 7. The new doctrine is “stability and peace through strength” – sometimes requiring striking first, striking hard, and managing diplomatic consequences later.
The Iranian Hand: Deception and Destabilization
There is a larger strategic context of Iranian regime deception at work. Former White House security official Dr. Mike Doran reminds us to be wary of “falling into Tehran’s trap.” He notes that al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani) traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan and met with Israeli officials there, which casts doubt that al-Sharaa would provoke Israel over an orchestrated attack against the Syrian Druze.
Doran’s analysis points to familiar Iranian regime tactics: while al-Sharaa’s trip to Baku was a consequential setback for Iran, “Tehran is pushing back by turning its enemies against each other.”
The same lesson applies to the October 7 Hamas massacre.
As Doran noted, “Saudi Arabia and Israel were normalizing, Turkey and Israel were mending ties – a coherent, U.S.-led regional bloc was forming: KSA, Turkey, Israel. Then came October 7 – driving a wedge between Jerusalem, Ankara, and Riyadh.”
Today, Iranian operatives and former Assad commanders remain active throughout Syria.
“Is Jerusalem certain al-Sharaa ordered the Druze attacks?” Doran asked.
It’s a significant reminder. Has Israel ruled out Iranian manipulation designed to sabotage emerging Syrian-Israeli cooperation?
Doran’s strategic warning is stark: “A policy that holds al-Sharaa responsible for forces he doesn’t control won’t strengthen him, but rather weaken him. In practice, it becomes a tacit, perhaps unwitting vote for a disintegrated Syria. But a disintegrated Syria serves Iran more than it serves Israel. And it won’t help with Turkey either.”
Strategic Dilemma: The Threat of Israel’s Overreaction
Israel’s determination to beat back jihadist infiltration of Suwayda and Southern Syria includes the potential for Israel overreaction. Though Syria serves as a crucial buffer between Israel and Iran, Israel’s requirement of defensible borders necessitates deep buffer zones throughout southern Syria up to Damascus enforcing demilitarization. Netanyahu reiterated on July 17 that Israel will occupy and enforce a buffer zone in southern Syria indefinitely, not conditionally. He has mandated Israel’s continued military presence and operations to prevent Syrian military and other terror militias from operating in the country’s South.
At the same time, Israel must avoid repeating its costly occupation of Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. Israel’s lessons learned in Lebanon, with Hizbullah ultimately sitting on Israel’s northern border, are instructive. Israel is acting to prevent jihadists from moving south towards its border.
The Limits of Diplomatic Accommodation
The Trump administration had made high-risk gestures to Syria’s leadership – lifting crippling sanctions, extending international recognition, and embracing al-Sharaa as a regional partner. Despite recent reported criticisms by White House staffers of what they perceive as Netanyahu’s overreaction in Syria, it raises a larger strategic question. At what point does the United States recognize that carrots alone are insufficient when dealing with ideologically driven movements?
The Suwayda barbarity – systematic executions, torture, sectarian violence – mirrors patterns across the Islamic world. Was this remarkably different from October 7? From Muslim persecution of Hindus in Gujarat, Christians in Pakistan and Nigeria, minorities in Somalia and Sudan? The uncomfortable truth Western policymakers struggle acknowledging is that many Islamist movements – Sunni, Shiite, or derivatives – share a fundamental goal of eliminating or subjugating non-Muslim “infidels.” This is a theological imperative, not a political grievance resolvable through diplomatic accommodation.
How far is the U.S.-led Western alliance willing to go in dealing with Islamist regimes, even when their leaders don European suits? The test of Islamist moderation isn’t what its leaders say in Washington, but how they treat religious minorities when no one’s watching.
The Path Forward: Strategic Realism
Syria’s new government faces a definitive test: Can it protect all its faiths, sects, and ethnic groups? Or will it prove another iteration of Islamist authoritarian rule masked by Western amenable diplomatic respectability?
Israel’s severe military response to the recent regime-affiliated Islamic atrocities against its Druze population demonstrates Israel’s new self-understanding of its “strong horse” regional role. This is a fateful moment for al-Sharaa’s fledgling regime. The U.S.-led Western alliance is watching. The U.S.-brokered cease-fire may prove a temporary respite. President Trump has risked personal political, diplomatic, and security capital. If al-Sharaa can prevent future massacres and hold perpetrators accountable, he may prove worthy of diplomatic investment.
But if ideologically fueled violence continues – if minorities remain vulnerable while Damascus offers assurances – the West may need to acknowledge a harder truth: nominal radical movements cannot be reformed, only contained.
Israel, too, faces a test. It must strike a new balance between enforcing its new national security policy of no tolerance for terror threats and the requirement of early prevention of jihad, while leveraging new opportunities for non-belligerence pacts and deeper regional alliances.
This requires that Israel lead as Washington’s key regional ally with a clear-eyed recognition of the difference between adversaries’ tactical moderation and strategic transformation. Recent events suggest Syria’s new leadership has yet to demonstrate the latter.
