The Jolani regime in Syria has promised peace, while the world has watched Israel seize 600km of Syrian territory. But the land seizures will stretch Israel to the limit, writes Chris Sutherland.

In recent weeks the UK broadcast media gave us news about Elon Musk and Nigel Farage but forgot to mention Israel’s illegal 600km land grab in Syria, its seizure of Mount Hermon, the on-going bombing of the Syrian military and civil infrastructure, and the 1,000+ violations of the 60-day ceasefire in Lebanon.

They failed to mention Israel’s stepping up of their genocide in Gaza with a blitz of destruction in the north and clear implementation of the ‘General’s Plan’ to completely empty out the north of its Palestinian population. We now have the obscenity of 2 million displaced starving people, freezing in tents and flooded conditions, diseased and traumatised, living in rubble and make-shift shelters. At the time of writing 8 babies dying of hypothermia, the death toll reaching 46,000, and 110,000 wounded. The World Health Organisation estimates over 25,000 will be dying of chronic heart, lung and kidney conditions, with polio, cholera and typhoid lurking, Gaza’s entire health system destroyed and just a trickle of aid trucks reaching the south and virtually none in the north.

The real-time genocide has been unfolding relentlessly for fifteen months. Lebanon is hardly mentioned, and Syria, which so enthused everyone by the surprise fall of the Assad dictatorship and the rapid advance of rebel forces, particularly the former Al-Qaeda, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham better known by its acronym, HTS, and its leader al-Jolani, and rebels advancing from the south from Jordan.

No-one regrets the fall of the brutal dictator, Bashar Assad, although in the days before he fell, a meeting of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia were actually preparing the ground to rehabilitate Assad back into the Arab fold. Then they were suddenly overtaken by events (like everyone else) and are now obliged to beat a path to Jolani’s door to present themselves, like medieval robber Barons paying tribute to a new king.

Jolani abandoned his Jihadi robes and re-packaged himself in Zelensky fatigues, appealing for national unity, now calling himself by his birth name al-Sharaa, donning a suit to meet the raft of foreign ministers. It’s even more remarkable that the US still has a $10 million bounty on his head and HTS is still a proscribed organisation.

Nevertheless, given the terror of 14 years death and destruction in Syria under Assad, just about everybody is hoping for a period of peace and national reconstruction and for the Syrians just to be left alone to forge their own path.

The civil war was littered with regional and global meddling. It’s reflected in the mosaic of competing groups across Syria – Independent Kurdish fighters of PKK and YPG, US-back Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Syrian National Army in the north, pockets of ISIS still holding out, rebels in the south, HTS itself and an array of other groups.

It was the rebels advancing from the south who took most of Damascus. Maps showing the mosaic of competing groups describe the southern rebels as ‘unknown’ but thought to be CIA-funded through Jordan. HTS arrived later, travelling down the unprotected M5 Highway, its former Hezbollah defenders having been recalled to fight the Israeli invasion in Lebanon.

It remains to be seen how a 30,000-strong HTS can hold together a re-born post civil war Syria. Many of them are foreign fighters. Al-Sharaa is putting together a new national government and army. He’s appealing for groups to disarm and forge a new Syria, with toleration for minorities. Even the Kurdish SDF has intimated it might join a decentralised, pluralistic, democratic state, so long as the Kurds were constitutionally protected.¹

Jolani says he wants an inclusive transitional government with himself as de facto head. But he also warned that factions should dissolve themselves:

“Unregulated weapons lead to the destabilisation of the state. The logic of the state differs from the logic of the revolution and we will not allow any weapons to remain outside state control.”²

Turkey has said it will form a ‘strategic partnership’ and help Syria develop a new constitution.

But there are caveats. Jolani has also said that he doesn’t foresee democratic elections in Syria for at least another four years. His excuse is that Syria doesn’t have accurate electoral registers given 14 years of civil war. His interim government is packed with HTS appointees – al-Bashir as Prime Minister, al-Shibani as Foreign Minister, Murhaf Qasra as Defence Minister and himself as President.³

But what happens if the factions don’t disarm? What happens if they chose to fight each other?

Over Christmas the Syrian National Army (SNA) moved against Kurdish areas up to Manbij in the north with reports of civilians fleeing and killings. The SNA does not have a good human rights record. How do the Kurds fit into the new Syria? Why should they abandon the autonomy they fought so hard to achieve? They hold most of Syria’s oil reserves and some of the best agricultural areas. Kurdish autonomy within a Federal structure might seem a solution. Some kind of Kurdish independence has long been overdue but difficult to see Syria’s ‘strategic partnership’ with Turkeyi even allowing this. Nobody knows how this will play out.

There’s no absence of goodwill or well-meaning words of support regionally and internationally. Syria will need billions to rebuild and reconstruct. But not everyone is disarming. There are still Assad loyalists dotted everywhere and across the border with Iraq. For the moment they are keeping low. HTS are doing ‘security sweeps’ in Hama and Homs looking for weapons. Yet Assad loyalists killed 14 police in an ambush in Tartus just before Christmas, with clashes in Homs and Aleppo. They are thought to be remnants of Assad’s ‘4^th Division’, his former Presidential Guard.⁴ Alawites and other minorities were reported crossing the border into Lebanon to escape sectarianism.⁵

The Cradle recalls the massacre of 190 Alawites in August 2013 in Latakia by Al-Qaeda forces and the destruction of 10 villages and the seizing of hundreds of captives, recorded by Human Rights Watch in their report You can still see their blood (10.10.13). Does a leopard change its spots?⁶

Tartus and Latakia are Alawite strongholds where Russia’s military, air and naval bases were located. HTS tried to reassure Russia that they could keep their bases in Syria but they moved most of their assets anyway. HTS must know that they can’t balance Russian interests against American/Israeli interests.

What prospect for peace?

Not everyone is thrilled with the new reality in Syria. Egypt’s President Al-Sisi let the cat out of the bag when he described a popular uprising in Syria as a disaster, quoting ‘un-named forces’ destroying Syria and threatening to do the same in Egypt. All the Middle Eastern dictatorships remember how the Arab Spring spread across the region in 2011. He referred to ‘efforts’ being made to undermine the Egyptian economy and ‘social peace’ (Suez revenues have tanked as a result of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea).⁷

Iraq has also warned that it will launch pre-emptive strikes against any Al Qaeda advance from Syria. All eyes will be on how events in Syria affect other states in the region. MEE Editor David Hearst believes it will act as inspiration to the ‘Arab masses’:

“It is well past the time Egyptians, Jordanians and Iraqi’s rethink their understanding of powerful revolutions. They wax and wane but they don’t die.”⁸

The sudden break-out of HTS on 29^th November, just a day after the declared 60-day ceasefire in Lebanon, didn’t come out of nowhere. The US, Turkeyi and Israel had been helping them prepare. The timing was crucial and deliberate. Western and Israeli intelligence knew Assad was ripe for plucking. This was the moment when HTS would cut the life-line of the ‘Shia Axis’ between Iran, Assad and Hezbollah, and completely split the axis. The advance from the south and north down an undefended motorway was sufficient for Assad to collapse, its poorly paid and demoralised conscripts throwing down their arms and changing into civilian clothes.

Assad had apparently fled to Russia days before. The butcher of Syria knew his time was up. And suddenly we followed jubilant crowds looting the Presidential Palace, gunmen firing into the air; we had pictures of Jeremy Bowen exploring the Sednaya torture centre amidst frantic relatives looking for missing loved ones; C4’s Paraic O’Brien filming mass graves at al-Qutayfah thought to contain over 100,000 bodies.⁹[9] The sheer scale of Assad’s cruelty and crimes is itself a driving force for national unity. The yearning of the Syrian ‘masses’ for peace, democracy, and justice, after years of agony and torment is visceral.

One more step towards ‘Greater Israel’?

But who is this Jolani? What does HTS represent?  Would a Sharia-inspired HTS be able to guarantee a multi-religious, multi-ethnic Syria? Who is the real al-Sharaa?

Israel for one seems to have already decided.

They may have been prepared to use HTS as a counterbalance to the Shia Axis and follow US realpolitik to oppose Assad. But did they really expect Assad to fall so completely? Assad after all did not actively pursue war against Israel, despite a close relationship with Iran and Hezbollah. They stuck to the terms of the 1974 peace treaty and observed the buffer status of the occupied Golan Heights. As the ‘devil they knew’ wasn’t Assad a better option than a triumphant Al-Qaeda?¹⁰

It certainly explains Israel’s immediate and dramatic reaction to the advance of HTS down the M5 Motorway. They grabbed what they could, seizing the coveted Mount Hermon (which dominates the skyline of Lebanon), stormed into the Syrian side of the buffer zone, advancing north along the mountain passes to Lebanon (previously Iran’s supply route to Hezbollah) and have now seized territory the equivalent of 600 km of Syrian territory.

In the days following Assad’s fall they launched one of the largest bombing campaigns against strategic military and economic targets all across Syria, alongside the US and France, hitting ISIS outposts, destroying Assad’s military arsenal, its air defence systems, missiles supply depots, air force and navy, as well as military research and production bases over a month long period of relentless air strikes. The aim was clearly to stop them from falling in the hands of HTS and other Jihadist/rebel groups, but they were also integral to the war against Hezbollah, Gaza and the West Bank. This is all about Israeli territorial expansion and regional hegemony.

In the first week of January they seized the strategically important dams: the al-Mantara Dam in Quneitra and the al-Wahada dam in the Yarmouk River Basin. These dams account for 30% of Syria’s water and 40% of Jordan’s supply.¹¹ Water is power in the Middle East.

Israel described its territorial acquisitions in the same ‘temporary and defensive’ language used since the 1948 Nakba – ‘realities on the ground’, ‘what we have we hold’, for the religious Zionists, one more step towards ‘Greater Israel’ – an Israeli hegemony from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Gulf.

Israel achieved in days what it had failed to achieve in 50 years – the complete mastery of the Golan, destruction of the Syrian military, navy and air force, it had broken the Shia Axis of Resistance and cut off Hezbollah from Iran, as well as seizing an area in Syria three times the size of Gaza!

HTS have done nothing to oppose any of this, other than to say they are not a threat to Israel. Druze communities on the buffer zones are now under Israeli occupation and feel abandoned.¹²

So successful and so unopposed has been the territorial land grab that Israel has virtually ignored the 28^th November 60-day ceasefire with Lebanon, with over 1,000 recorded violations. In Southern Lebanon it has managed to take more territory than it was able to take from Hezbollah during two months of conflict. It now has the capability to invade Lebanon from the Syrian side of the border to outflank Hezbollah north of the Litani River. The resumption of war in Lebanon now looks likely.

France and the US have also been joining in with the air campaign hitting the remaining pockets of ISIS and to further deplete Assad’s former weapons capabilities, including chemical weapons. More importantly it now gives Israel total air superiority to hit Iran without fearing Assad’s former air defence systems, leading to speculation that Iran may be forced into a pre-emptive strike against Israel before an all-out attack by the US once Trump accedes to power.

Who is Al-Jolani? Al-Jolani, nee Ahmed al-Sharaa, was born in Saudi Arabia in 1982 where his father worked as an oil engineer. In 1988 the family returned to Damascus. He fought as a Jihadist in Iraq during the insurgency of 2003-5 and was imprisoned in Camp Bucca where he met Abu Bakr Baghdadi who went on the lead ISIS. He left for Syria in 2011 to set up the al-Nusra Front which was affiliated to al-Qaeda. It was here the US issued its $10m bounty. In 2016 he severed ties with al-Nusra/al-Qaeda to become Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), forming a ‘Syrian Salvation Government’ in Idlib, supported by Turkeyi, the US and Israel.

The United Nations has barely reacted to attacks on two sovereign powers, genocide in Gaza and the continued relentless settler colonial land grab in the West Bank – all illegal under international law.¹³ The ICJ have yet to rule on ‘Genocide’.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the ‘normalisation’ with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States is back on the agenda. Annexation of Area C in the West Bank is back. The last thing Israel wants is a resurgent and potentially hostile Syria to rise from the ashes. They’re quite happy to ferment sectarian division and the kind of Warlordism that developed in Libya. Israel has long nurtured chaos and division in neighbouring states to secure its power.¹⁴

The Axis of Resistance Rolls On

Failed states are divided states. They allow Israel, the US and the West to continue with their imperialist agendas.

In 2001 the Pentagon Neo-Cons under George W Bush set out their plans to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing with Iran”. Pretty much all of them became failed states. Only Iran remains.¹⁵

Israel’s apparent advances in Syria and Lebanon and the denting of the Shia Axis of Resistance may look compelling now, but they’re a small population strewn over a larger and larger area. Holding on to territory against burgeoning resistance movements (which will inevitably result) will stretch Israel to the limit. Greater Israel was always an ultra-right, religious fantasy.

The wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and the Houthis have virtually bankrupted Israel’s economy and exhausted its military. No nation on earth can fight forever wars. The IDF is struggling for troops, reservists are failing to report for duty. There are more ‘refuseniks’. The Haredim are rioting at being conscripted. Ilan Pappe’s latest book is correct when he concludes:

“It becomes clear that Israel as a Jewish project is not working. There seems to be very little common ground shared by secular and religious Jews in Israel, apart from hatred of the Arabs in general. That’s not enough for a stable national identity.”¹⁶

As in all empires, the rot starts from within.

After the horrors of 14 years of civil war and the destruction of much of the country, the Syrian people are entitled to peace, justice and a period of national reconstruction. It’ll not be achieved by factionalism and guns. It will be achieved by working class unity and opposition to sectarian divisions, guaranteed civil and political rights for all, religious freedoms and toleration. This means kicking out the imperialist meddlers and the settler colonialist Israel and struggling for a free Palestine.

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1. The Cradle “US-backed Kurds express readiness to join ‘New Syrian Army’ under HTS rule” 27.12.24 ↩︎
2. Middle East Monitor “HTS leader says Turkeyi is Syria’s friend, pledges strategic partnership” 23.12.24. ↩︎
3. Al Jazeera 22.12.24. ↩︎
4. Al Jazeera ‘Syria says 14 Policemen killed in ambush by forces loyal to Assad’, 26.12.24. ↩︎
5. The Cradle “Syrian Minorities flee” 12.12.24. ↩︎
6. The Cradle “Abu Mohammed al-Julani: putting lipstick on a pig” 13.12.24. The US described ‘N E Syria as the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11’ yet by 2016-17 the US and EU were funding them as a ‘strategic asset against Assad … in a game where ideology is secondary to power’. ↩︎
7. Middle East Eye “After Assad’s fall, Sisi warns of ‘chaos and destruction’.” 24.12.24. ↩︎
8. David Hearst, MEE, “Assad downfall: is the Arab Spring back from the dead?” 10.12.24. ↩︎
9. C4 News ‘The true scale of Assad’s slaughter’ Paraic O’Brien, 16.12.24. ↩︎
10. For the various Palestinian positions on the Syrian civil war see Al Jazeera’s “How do Palestinians see the Syrian War?” Adnan abu Amer 20.10.18. Hamas opposed Assad and withdrew from Syria. Some leftist groups like the DFLP and PLFP supported him. A poll in Sept 2012 found 80% of WB/Gazans supported the opposition. By 2016 another poll showed 18% supporting Assad. The main refugee camp at Yarmouk housing over 110,000 was destroyed in fighting by both sides. ↩︎
11. The Cradle, “Israeli Army bomb Damascus outskirts and seize control of Syrian water sources” 2.1.25. ↩︎
12. “BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel’s incursion” 15.12.24 – Lucy Williamson speaks to Druze villagers in Hadar in the buffer zone. Interesting that Williamson sees it just as an ‘incursion’ which is of course the Israeli narrative. ↩︎
13. Mondoweiss “Inside Israel’s opportunistic invasion of Syria” Mitchell Plitnick. He asks: ‘where are the calls for sanctions, for freezing trade deals, especially weapons sales to Israel as it invades a sovereign state?’ ↩︎
14. Jonathan Cook Blog “Israel, not the ‘Liberators of Damascus’ will decide Syrian fate”. 19.12.24. In 2013 ‘Foreign Policy’ reported on Israel’s covert programme to arm and fund at least 12 different factional groups in the Syrian civil war: “Inside Israel’s secret programme to back Syrian rebels” 6.9.18. ↩︎
15. Jonathan Cook Blog “Syria’s Assad has fallen just as the Pentagon planned 23 years ago”, 11.12.24. Quote is taken from an interview with Gen Wesley Clark, in a Wikileaks post on ‘X’ 3.8.24 ↩︎
16. Ilan Pappe, A very short history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, One World, 2024, pp 143-144. ↩︎