Israel, Mixing Force With Diplomacy, Takes ‘Discordant' Approach to Syria

New York Times

17-07-2025

For weeks, Israel and Syria have engaged in secret back-channel talks, searching for a diplomatic resolution to decades of tensions, mainly over territory captured by Israel from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
The Israeli news media has been awash with optimistic predictions of a limited non-aggression pact, or even a landmark peace deal between the Jewish state and the former jihadists who seized control of Damascus last December.
Israel's brazen strikes this week on Syrian government forces and infrastructure, including in the capital, Damascus, have highlighted the premature nature of such expectations in such a fluid geopolitical context. It has also exemplified how Israel, still traumatized by the surprise of Hamas's attack in October 2023 but buoyed by its more recent successes against Hezbollah and Iran, is now more likely to use force to pre-emptively address perceived threats — even if it derails diplomatic efforts to achieve the same goal.
'It seems very discordant,' said Itamar Rabinovich, an Israeli historian of Syria who led Israel's negotiations with Syria during the 1990s. 'It runs against the effort to negotiate.'
The strikes reflect Israel's post-2023 military doctrine, which combines, Mr. Rabinovich said, 'a very strange mixture of paranoia following Oct. 7 and a sense of power following the success in Lebanon and in Iran. And the result is this preference for using force rather than diplomacy.'
The specific spur for Israel's actions this week was the Syrian government's deployment of forces to southwest Syria to contain fighting between Bedouin tribesmen and Syria's Druse minority. Though much of Syria's arsenal was decimated by scores of Israeli strikes last winter and years of civil war, the Syrian government was able to send a column of outdated tanks and troops in pickup trucks.
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