Israel verfolgt "planlose Politik" in Syrien

Elizabeth Tsurkov kritisiert in der Jpost die israelische Politik gegenüber Syrien

Bis September diesen Jahres war sie noch Geisel in Händen der vom Iran gesteuerten Kata'ib Hezbollah-Miliz im Irak, wo sie Folter und Missbrauch erleiden musste. Seit ihrer Freilassung ist Elisabeth Tsukov, eine der besten Kennerinnen der Lage in Syrien, nicht nur wieder frei, sondern auch aktiv wie zuvor.

In einem längeren Gespräch mit Seth J. Frantzman kritisiert sie die Syrien-Politik Israel, dessen Luftwaffe erst jüngst wieder ein Dorf jenseits der Grenze angegriffen hat. Und nicht irgend ein Dorf:

The raid targeted the village of Beit Jinn, at the foot of Mount Hermon, several miles from the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan. The operation reflected an Israeli policy that has expanded since the fall of the Assad regime nearly a year ago, on December 8, 2024. Israel has increased its activity in Syria and moved into the buffer zone that had defined the ceasefire line since 1974. (…)

In the wake of the raid on Beit Jinn, Tsurkov wrote on X/Twitter about one of the Syrians who was killed in the raid and how he was previously linked to Syrian rebels against the Assad regime.

She noted that “Israel supported over a dozen of [the] factions in southern Syria until the Assad regime and foreign Shia militias took over the area in 2018.”

She added that one of the men killed in the IDF raid “was previously a member of an opposition faction that was supported by Israel for years in the town, under the command of Iyad Kamal, better known as ‘Moro.’

The faction received weapons, and the town's inhabitants received humanitarian assistance and treatment in Israeli hospitals.”

Beit Jinn was placed under siege by the Assad regime. Israel continued to help the locals, she writes, “in an attempt to prevent the town from falling [to the Assad regime]. It eventually did fall, leading to the forcible displacement of opposition supporters from the town to northern Syria.”

Now this same village that was once attacked by the Assad regime and whose residents were supported by Israel is in the spotlight again.

Sie hält diese Angriffe für nicht nur falsch, sondern auch kontraproduktiv:

She noted that the goodwill Israel “earned in Beit Jinn is unparalleled to any other town in Syria. No other town endured such a blockade during which Israel saved the lives of residents there and attempted to prevent it from falling. The fact that the population there is turning on Israel is because Israel changed its policies, which once supported the population, and it is now raiding and harming livelihoods. All these people who once had goodwill towards Israel have now soured on it, and it’s not because they suddenly became radical; it is because Israel changed its policies.”

Ihre Einschätzung ist, dass sich die HTS unter Interimspräsidenten al Shara wirklich aus einer jihadistischen Organisation in eine pragmatisch-islamistische verwandelt habe, der Machterhalt wichtiger sei als Ideologie:

Tsurkov said that it's incorrect to view Sharaa and HTS as jihadists. “Sharaa and the top leadership of HTS has broken with jihadism and Salafis many years ago, when they were ruling Idlib. Many of the founding principles of Jihadism of Salafism were abandoned by them. They cooperated with the Turks, which is a secular state in the view of jihadists. They stopped enforcing religious moral laws on the population, they removed the most radical elements from their midst; assassinated some of them, jailed others, simply expelled them, and changed the curriculum to [steer] their fighters away from jihadist texts.”
The Syrian leadership needs to be understood from a different perspective, she says. It is different than whatever past roots it may have in extremism.

“It needs to be understood as a deeply pragmatic leadership that is interested in, above all else, power, and therefore it understood that it cannot rule over the population even in Idlib which is quite conservative while applying jihadist principles, that this was impossible.”  She added that the “top concern of the [Syrian] leadership is preserving power and therefore they need to be understood as prioritizing their survival of the rule. Any kind of conflict with Israel, any kind of actions from uncontrolled groups against Israel would lead to an Israeli reaction and destabilize their rule, and thus they would do anything in their power to prevent such an attack from happening.”

Während sie der syrischen Regierung auch gegenüber Israel eine pragmatische Haltung attestiert und betont, dass man mit dem Iran und der Hizbollah ja gemeinsame Feinde habe, fehlt ihr auf israelischer Seite genau dieser Pragmatismus. Sie attestiert der Regierung in Jerusalem "Planlosigkeit" und moniert, dass eine langfristige Strategie fehle:

She said the current operations in southern Syria don’t bring a tactical gain and are “now producing violent counter reactions that could turn southern Syria into a new front when it wasn't one to begin with.”

She noted that “Israel has maintained its forces in Syria for almost a year, and for a very long time, Syrians just tolerated this despite the terrible effects on their livelihood, the arrests that are taking place. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israel went in saying that it needs to fend off threats. These threats did not exist, but Israel, through its actions, is now creating the ground for a popular resistance movement.”

The authorities in Damascus also can’t prevent this because they can’t deploy forces to the border because Israel has warned them not to. Israel has demanded that the area near the border be demilitarized, essentially creating a power vacuum where threats emerge.

“This is a highly volatile situation that Israeli policies [have] driven.” It is driven by the trauma of October 7, Tsurkov noted. This has led Israel to have a policy anchored more in pre-empting threats. “It is in Israel’s interest to ensure that there is a responsible adult, there is a state that is able to uphold law-and-order across Syria; to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah; to prevent cells that the Iranians are supporting inside Syria from being able to act against Israel.”

“It is also in Israel's interest to diversify the alliances in relationships that the current authorities in Damascus have, to pull Syria toward the Sunni Arab, pro-American camp - which includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia - at the expense of Turkey and Qatar," she said. "Therefore, I think, setting out clear policy objectives in a vision and then pursuing these policies is what Israel needs to be doing in Syria and also other arenas.”

The challenge in Syria and other fronts is to find a strategy. “Israel carried out successful military operations across the region, but then failed to cement those gains in any kind of a political agreement. This is what’s missing.”