Israel seizing on Syria chaos to strike military assets
.webp)
After launching hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military assets and seizing positions including the summit of a mountain with an uninterrupted sightline to the capital Damascus, Israel appears to be taking advantage of what it sees as a unique moment of opportunity.
Syrian command structures were in disarray, with key positions apparently left unmanned after the fall of the Assad regime.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says its air force and navy have conducted more than 350 strikes since Saturday night, taking out an estimated 70-80% of Syrian strategic military assets from Damascus to Latakia.
They included fighter aircraft, radar and air defence sites, and naval ships, as well as weapons stockpiles, the IDF said.
"The navy operated last night to destroy the Syrian fleet with great success," said Defence Minister Israel Katz.
The IDF has also moved ground forces east from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into a demilitarised buffer zone in Syria and, it now admits, just beyond.
Katz said he had told the military to "establish a sterile defence zone free of weapons and terrorist threats in southern Syria, without a permanent Israeli presence".
One Israeli commentator said the past 72 hours had "stood out even for people who thought they had already seen everything".
"It didn't strip the Syrian military of specific capabilities only - it sent it back to the starting line, bereft of any significant strategic capabilities," wrote Yoav Limor in the Israel Hayom newspaper.
"The IDF operation to destroy Syria's military capabilities is the largest it has ever undertaken," commented Udi Etzion on the Walla news site.
Former Israeli Air Force officers commented in online posts that some of the attacks carried out as part of this operation were based on plans drawn years ago.
One military analyst said that some targets were already identified by Israel in the mid-1970s.
Meanwhile, troops have taken control of positions in the Golan, including the top of Mt Hermon, according to Israeli media. In Arabic, the mountain is known as Jabal al-Sheikh.
"The territory guarantees strategic control over the whole southern Syrian arena, which generates an immediate threat to Israel," the Ynet news website quoted Kobi Michael, a researcher at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), as saying. "There is no higher vantage point than the Syrian part of the Golan."
Officials stress that Israel has been acting in its own national security interests following the collapse of the Assad regime.
They say the aim is to stop weapons that the regime held falling into the wrong hands – whether Syrian extremist factions or its old foe, the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Hezbollah and its backer, Iran, were close allies of Assad, helping him to prop him up in office during the long civil war in Syria.
"We will not allow an extreme Islamic terrorist entity to act against Israel beyond its border, putting its citizens at risk," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video message on Tuesday.