Israel Strikes Syria Seeking To Prop Up A Proxy: Israeli and U.S. interests begin to diverge.

• The proximate cause of the recent increase in violence and instability in Syria is recent clashes between the Druze and other tribes, primarily Bedouin tribes, in Suwayda, southwest of Damascus.

• But the ultimate cause is Israel’s desire to use domestic Syrian fractures and sectarian conflicts for their own ends: advancing specific Israeli geopolitical objectives.

• Ostensibly, Israeli involvement in the conflict has been justified in the following way:

  The Druze have long been a loyal faction within Israel itself, have served in the IDF; the Druze of Israel are concerned for the safety and well-being of the Druze in Syria; and there is a political pressure on Netanyahu to defend the Druze in Syria—especially the pressure from the IDF, which contains many officers and soldiers of Jewish descent.

• This is the primary narrative emanating from Israeli media and official sources.

• The consequent argument is that Israel is involved in order to defend the minorities that it has committed itself defending to, and left unsaid is that there's an additional political benefit to the Prime Minister Netanyahu being seen as a strong defender of all Israelis and factions loyal to Israel—not just of Jewish interests—something important at the time when the whole world is attacking Israel for its atrocities in Gaza.

• But, and we will delve into the details below, it is important to emphasize the following: when Israel says that it's defending the Druze community, it is not really defending the Druze community as a whole.

• Instead Israel is defending one of three distinct factions of the Druze community (led by Al-Hijri and his followers) that's implicated in extensive crime and has a shameful history of supporting the bloodthirsty Assad regime.

• But rationalizations aside, the strategic objective is also quite clear.

• This objective consists of ensuring a weak and fractured Syria, where the central state is too weak to be an ally of Turkey - where the Syrian state is too weak to provide a stable environment for the setup and functioning of Turkish military bases, and thus projection of Turkish hard power.

• Israel wants Syria to be generally weak, because it is a pro-Turkey, Sunni-majority central government.

• Now, as we discussed before, Syria deserves a chance for peace and stability after so much bloodshed and suffering.

• They now have a chance at that in a confident leader like al-Sharaa, who is very pragmatic, not ideological, willing to do deals not only with President Trump, (who was impressed by him), but also with Israelis.

• In fact, there have been meetings between Israeli and central Syrian government delegation led by al-Sharaa in UAE, and most recently in Azerbaijan as well, where deconfliction discussions took place.

• And it is now possible that (with a decisive U.S. involvement) there’s going to be a potentially stable deal between Israel and Syria.

• So this would not only be in benefit of Syrian people, but also would serve Israel’s national goals of securing a Syria that doesn’t pose national security threats.

• But again, ultimately, these clashes in Southwest Syria and Israeli involvement are primarily caused by a desire to have a fractured and weak Syria that’s easier to manipulate and control.

• Even before this, and before Israel was up in arms over protection of the Druze, this was being planned with the Kurds.

• There were discussions between the SDF and Israel for Mazloum Abadi to maintain SDF and YPG Kurds’ autonomy and not subject themselves to central government military in Syria.

• That didn’t work because PKK agreed to a long-lasting peace with Turkey, and after 30 years of fighting agreed to lay down its arms.

• And this was a practical (and almost inevitable) decision by the PKK, given the reality that 1) the U.S. was leaving the territory and withdrawing from the region militarily, but also 2) Turkey-Israeli conflict was escalating, and PKK leader himself stated very openly that they didn’t want to turn into a puppet in the conflict between Israel and Turkey and turn into Israeli pawn.

• Because ultimately, PKK leader knew that the interest of Israel would only be served if PKK stayed alive and fighting indefinitely, not if the PKK’s ultimate objective of carving out a Kurdish state within Turkey was resolved definitively in Kurds’ interest.

• PKK leader Ocalan thus understood that Israeli support would have significant limits.

• (side note: and he openly ruled out the suggestion that Kurds must play a role in Israeli grand strategy.)

• First, the United States would not allow Israel to continuously and consistently arm PKK to help them in a fight against their NATO ally Turkey.

• Therefore, there would be limits—concrete, hard power resource limits—on Israel to arm the PKK.

• Since let's not forget that Israel ultimately depends on the United States for weapons and ammo.

• And Without Washington, Israel cannot conduct long campaigns of hard-powered dominance.

• Secondly, even if Israel had unlimited resources, they would only support PKK to the extent that they can remain a menace, and not to the extent that they can actually win against the Turks

• And so, faced with this situation, Israel decided to double down on backing the Druze minority.

• And the added benefit of this was the proximity of their concentration in southwest Syria, close to Golan Heights, so it was logistically easier to prop it up (as opposed to Kurds in the Northeast).

• That is the ultimate cause of this recent conflict where Israel has escalated and struck the Ministry of Defense of Syria’s central government, dropping bombs directly at the ministry and other government offices.

• But proximate reasons for this conflict are local and were caused and triggered by immediate clashes between the Druze minority and tribes.

• Now let’s unpack this further and describe exactly what happened, why it happened, how the Syrian government responded, and what we can expect further going ahead.

Proximate causes of Syrian clashes: sectarian fractures, how Washington’s decisive involvement averted larger bloodshed & instability and what lies ahead.