Netanyahu confirms ceasefire, Syrian withdrawal from Sweida due to 'forceful action'
Israel has achieved aceasefire in Syria through 'forceful actions,' Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.
'We have established a clear policy: the demilitarization of the area south of Damascus and the protection of our brothers, the Druze,' he said.
'I instructed the IDF to act with force, because the Damascus regime sent its army south of the capital and massacred the Druze. As a result of our intensified action, a ceasefire has been established, and Syrian forces have withdrawn back to Damascus.'
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa's government would soon withdraw its forces from areas with Druze populations, an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday night.
Syria's Druze had reached a ceasefire agreement with the Syrian government in Sweida that would take immediate effect, Druze religious leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou said in a video broadcast by state media on Wednesday, Reuters reported earlier.
A ceasefire announced on Tuesday night collapsed after a few hours. There was still fire from government forces in the predominantly Druze city of Sweida after the announcement was made, a witness told Reuters.
Syria's official Syrian Arab News Agency corroborated the reports of a ceasefire agreement and said security checkpoints had been deployed across Sweida.
Israel conducted strikes on key Damascus sites
Israel struck the entrance to the Syrian regime's military headquarters complex in Damascus, the IDF reported Wednesday.
On Thursday, Sharaa accused Israel of trying to fracture Syria and promised to protect its Druze minority after US intervention to help achieve a truce in fighting between government forces and Druze fighters.
Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, the Islamist-led government's troops withdrew from Sweida, where dozens of people have been killed in days of conflict pitting Druze fighters against government troops and Bedouin tribes.
But in a worrying development, a Bedouin military commander said their fighters had launched a new offensive in Sweida province against Druze fighters, and that the truce only applied to government forces.
The Bedouin, a collection of Sunni Muslim farmers who have long-standing frictions with the Druze, were seeking to free detained colleagues, the Bedouin military commander told Reuters.
A round of fighting between the Bedouin and Druze earlier this week prompted the government to send troops to Sweida to quell the clashes, but the violence escalated until a ceasefire was declared.
The violence has underlined the challenges that Sharaa faces in stabilizing Syria and exerting centralized rule, despite his warming ties with the US and his administration's evolving security contacts with Israel.
One local journalist said he had counted more than 60 bodies in the streets of Sweida on Thursday morning. Ryan Marouf of Suwayda24 told Reuters he had found a family of 12 people killed in one house, including women and an elderly man.
On Wednesday, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, while also hitting government forces in the south, demanding they withdraw and saying Israel aimed to protect Syrian Druze, whom Israel's Druze consider brothers.
Israel, which bombed Syria frequently under the rule of ousted president Bashar al-Assad, has struck the country repeatedly this year, describing its new leaders as barely disguised jihadists and saying it will not allow them to deploy forces in areas of southern Syria near its border.
Addressing Syrians on Thursday, Sharaa accused Israel of seeking to 'dismantle the unity of our people,' saying it had 'consistently targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime.'
Sharaa, commander of an al-Qaeda faction before cutting ties with the group in 2016, said protecting Druze citizens and their rights was 'our priority.' He rejected any attempt to drag them into the hands of an 'external party.'
Sharaa vowed to hold responsible those who committed violations against 'our Druze people.'
Netanyahu said Israel had established a policy demanding the demilitarization of a swathe of territory near the border, stretching from the Golan Heights to the Druze Mountain, east of Sweida.
Western diplomats were passing near Syria's Defense Ministry in Damascus in an armored convoy when Israel struck the building with several missiles on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the matter, including a Syrian eyewitness.
No one in the convoy was wounded, and it continued on its way, the diplomats said, declining to elaborate about the nationalities or number of those involved.
A Syrian medical source said the strikes on the Defense Ministry had killed five members of the security forces.
Amichai Stein contributed to this report.
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