Israeli-Turquies tensions increase on Syria

A growing confrontation between Israel and Turkey on influence in Syria poses a serious challenge for the new fragile government of Syria.

Wednesday evening, Israel bombed several military targets in Syria, including two airports – Hama military airport and the T4 base near Homs.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the bombing had practically destroyed the Hama base. An eminent Syrian Human Rights group said four employees of the Ministry of Defense had been killed and a dozen other people injured.

Air strikes hit SyriaBut their real target was Turkey.

Shortly after, the Israeli Foreign Minister accused Turkey of playing a “negative role” in Syria, and the Israeli Defense Minister warned the acting president of Syria, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whom he “would pay a very heavy prize” if he authorized the “hostile forces” to enter his country.

Ankara is currently negotiating a joint defense pact with the new government of Sharaa, and there have been generalized reports that Turkey moves to aircraft and air defense systems at the air bases Syria T4 and ALEP.

Some analysts have compared the intense air strikes of Israel at Hama Airport this week with the much lighter bombing on the edge of the T4 base, suggesting that Turkey can already have moved equipment And that Israel calibrated his attack to avoid a climbing in its own right.

Relations between Israel and Turkey plunged since the Gaza War began in October 2023, Ankara introducing commercial restrictions and accusing Israel of genocide.

This regional tension now takes place on a new land in Syria.

After air strikes on Wednesday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry accused Israel of destabilizing the region by “causing chaos and feeding terrorism” and said that it was now the greatest threat to the region’s security.

But the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hakan Fidan, told the news agency in Reuters that his country was not looking for confrontation with Israel and that Syria could define its own policies with its neighbor in the South.

The new head of Syria has repeatedly reported that he was not looking for confrontation with Israel. Shortly after swept away President Bashar al-Assad from Power last December, he told the BBC that Syria would not threaten any country.

He even left the door open to the normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel in the future, telling the economist last month that Syria wanted peace with all the parties, but that it was too early to discuss such a sensitive issue.

His absolute priority since taking power has been to unite a bitterly divided Syria and to pacify external relations with his neighbors, while he cement his power and control.

But Israel did not make it so easy. His military interventions in Syria feed conflicts with the two external powers such as Turkey and with internal groups such as jihadists in the south of the country.

Formerly an implacable enemy of the former president of Syria and his Iranian ally, Israel is also wary of Sharaa, a man who formerly directed the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and whose new government is supported by Turkey.

Since he took power, the Israeli army has repeatedly crossed Syrian weapons stores, aerodromes and other military sites left by the Old Regime, to avoid them falling into the hands of the enemy, he said.

He also occupied a demilitarized buffer zone, installed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and sent forces on the Syrian side of a neighboring mountain, installing nine bases through the region.

Israeli troops also make regular incursions in the provinces of southwest Syria, promising to prevent the presence of armed groups or government forces.

Earlier this week, the local government of the southern city of Deraa said that nine civilians had been killed in an Israeli bombardment during the deepest incursion by Israeli forces.

Four other people were killed in Israeli bombing near the village of Koya at the end of last month, after local armed men tried to stop the advance of Israeli forces.

Since then, the mosques of Deraa and Damascus have called to jihad against Israeli forces.

Charles Lister, head of the Syria program at the American Institute of Middle East, who has been studying the region, has counted more than 70 incursions on the ground in southwest Syria since February, describing this as “an extremely dangerous – and useless moment”.

Since the fall of Assad four months ago, he says, no attack has targeted Israel of Syria, the country’s security forces have intercepted “at least 18 expeditions of weapons intended for Hezbollah in Lebanon and have dismantled at least eight rocket launch sites linked to Iranian”.

Many Syrians are disappointed by Israel’s response to their new government. They looked at Israel for years targeting the Assad regime and thought that Assad’s fall would bring the chance of a less conflicting relationship with Israel.

Some say that this point of view changes now.

“We used to believe that the Israeli army only targeted the forces of the Assad regime,” said Ismail, owner of a restaurant west of the country. “But his continuous and incomprehensible bombings make us think that Israel is an enemy of the Syrian people.”

Syria is vulnerable because its internal divisions are easily ignited by regional and global interventions. The roots of the sectarian conflict are deep here, nourished by decades of repressive rule of the Assad family, members of the Alaouite minority of Syria.

Ahmed al -Sharaa’s attempts to reassure the country’s minorities were interrupted in early March by an explosion of violence in the coastal region of Syria – a bastion of the old regime.

At least 1,000 allawite civilians or disarmed fighters were massacred by pro-government forces, after the government units were stretched in ambush in a coordinated attack led by remains of the former armed forces of Syria.

These former armed forces were once supported by Iran. Some analysts believe that their leftovers can always receive a certain support from Tehran.

The Syrians celebrated the fall of Bashar al-Assad as the end of the civil war and a chance to unite.

But the external powers have helped to feed this civil war for more than a decade, and its neighbors are now considering the void left by Assad. The risk increases that Syria is again victim of the conflicts of external powers, take place on Syrian soil.