For decades, there's been an axiom in the Middle East that tends to ring true: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Israel has just turned the "enemy axiom" on its head. Their response to the end of Assad and the arrival of HTS is that the enemy of my enemy is my new enemy.
after the fall of Bashar al-Assad: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "we are changing the face of the Middle East" Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar: Israel was bombing facilities housing weapons stockpiles, to prevent them from falling into the hands of extremists.
Israel's rationale appears to be that it is using this opportunity to hit weapons supplies or military facilities that may pose a threat to it and has seized land to make Israel safer.
But at any time during the last 50 years, Israel could have struck any target that it deemed as a threat and for many years, the current buffer zone had been large enough to ensure Syrian troops could not mass near its border
Over recent years, when Israel has decided that any activity or facility inside Syria has been a threat, it has been able to take action — there have been occasions when Israeli intelligence detected trucks in Syria carrying weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel has bombed them.
There was no need because 1. Assad was not deemed a direct threat 2. He allowed Iran to arm Hezbollah through Syria but... 3. He "never really waged war against Israel since 1973"
However with HTS Israel is being proactive ensuring Syria does not become a base for another Islamist terrorism
