The toppling of Assad's regime in Syria may be bad news for Israel
A weakened Syrian regime under Assad therefore is in Israel’s interest But here’s the rub: Israel would like to see Assad weakened but not overmuch and not toppled
The sudden rekindling of the Syrian civil war has many Israelis looking to the northeast and asking the following question:
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“The enemy of my enemy is fighting my enemy, so whom am I for?”
Or in other words, who would Israel least like to see parked on its border with Syria: 1. Iranian-backed Shia jihadist extremists? 2. or Turkish-backed Sunni jihadists?
Since the answer is neither Israel’s approach to the developments in Syria will be to stay out of the melee as long as its security interests are not directly or immediately threatened
As Yitzhak Shamir was once quoted as having said during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s when two of the Jewish state’s fiercest enemies were weakening each other,
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Israel can “wish both sides success”
And this sequence of events led to the decision by the Syrian rebels to try to retake Aleppo and reignite the civil war at a time when three of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s biggest allies are severely weakened or preoccupied: 1. Moscow tied up in Ukraine 2. Hezbollah at their weakest point in years due to the Israeli onslaught 3. Iran all but lost its "Axis of Resistance" “ring of fire” proxies willing to do, its bidding
With Assad’s three allies far from what they once were, the rebels saw an opportunity – one that they had clearly been planning for – and pounced. Not coincidentally, the rebels struck on November 27 – the same day the Hezbollah-Israeli ceasefire was announced
This likely would not have happened were it not for October 7, 2023
