From Damascus to Gaza, Israel's doctrine of domination has one fatal flaw

Middle East Eye

6 hours ago

Israel's latest attack on Damascus was not an isolated air strike. It was a doctrine in motion.
On Wednesday, warplanes struck the Syrian defence ministry, military headquarters, and the vicinity of the presidential palace. Not near the frontlines or the border, but in the symbolic and sovereign heart of the Syrian capital.
The excuse was thin: a supposed effort to protect Syria's Druze minority. But no one should be fooled.
This was not about protection. It was about projection of power and arrogance.
It was not about the Druze - who are Syrian Arabs and part of Syria's national fabric - but about imposing a long-standing Israeli doctrine of regional fragmentation, one that stretches from the blood-soaked rubble of Gaza to the bombed ministries of Damascus and the destabilisation of entire nations beyond.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Israel, which has murdered over 60,000 Palestinians - most of them women and children - in Gaza, wounded more than 130,000, and destroyed nearly 80 percent of the territory's buildings, cannot now masquerade as a protector of minorities.
A state that is building what is fast becoming the world's largest open-air concentration camp, uses starvation as a weapon, commits daily apartheid in the Occupied West Bank and enshrines discrimination in its Basic Law, cannot lay claim to any moral high ground.
It has none. Least of all when it comes to feigning concern for Syria's Druze - whose fate it exploits to mask far more sinister intentions.
A televised humiliation act
The choice of target was not strategic. It was symbolic.
The Umayyad Square is not merely an intersection - it is the soul of Damascus. It stands as a monument to Syrian pride and Arab dignity. It bears the Damascene Sword and echoes with the legacy of the Umayyad Caliphate, which once stretched from the Pyrenees to the steppes of Central Asia. It was in this very square that Syrians, only eight months ago, celebrated the fall of six decades of dictatorship.
Syria after Assad: Sharaa's delicate balancing act with Israel
Ali Bakir Read More »
And it was there, in the middle of a working day, that Israel struck - knowing the square is surrounded by international and Arab TV stations, and that the footage would loop endlessly across satellite channels and social media feeds.
This was not just a bombardment. It was an act of televised humiliation. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz made that clear when he proudly shared a clip of a terrified Syrian presenter abandoning her seat on live broadcast as the defence ministry burned in the background.
It was theatre designed to shock Syrians and to frighten Arabs.
This strike was not just illegal or immoral, it was another step in a long-term strategy - a doctrine - that aims to impose Israeli hegemony on a fragmented, weakened, divided region.
It is neither new nor reactionary. It is a pillar of Israeli strategy, pursued across decades, governments, borders, and wars. Since the revolution in Syria and the fall of Assad regime, Israel has conducted more attacks on Syria than in all previous decades combined.
It has systematically destroyed military infrastructure, launched hundreds of incursions, and deepened its occupation of strategic terrain, including vital mountain ranges in southern Syria.
Its air raids have become routine, even banal - intended to normalise violation, erase sovereignty, and dismantle Syria's regional standing.
But this goes beyond actions - it is a mindset, one that Israeli leaders have been increasingly explicit about. Gideon Saar, Israeli foreign minister, declared just one day after Assad's flight: "The idea of a single sovereign Syria is unrealistic."
Israeli military lecturer Rami Simani went further still: "Syria is an artificial state… Israel must cause Syria to disappear. In its place will be five cantons."
And in an unequivocal statement of intent, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proclaimed: "The fighting will not end until hundreds of thousands of Gazans leave… and Syria is partitioned."
This is not rhetoric, it is a policy. And it is being implemented.
Undermining Arab unity
The roots of this strategy stretch back over seven decades, to the so-called Periphery Doctrine, crafted by David Ben-Gurion and Eliahu Sassoon in the early years of Israel's existence.
Its logic was simple and ruthless: since Israel could not integrate into the Arab world, it would encircle it - building alliances with non-Arab powers (Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia) and exploiting internal divisions within Arab states by empowering ethnic and religious minorities.
Israel may redraw maps, exploit minorities, strike capitals and starve children, but it cannot bomb its way into permanence and it cannot silence a region forever
Its aim was threefold: forge partnerships with non-Arab, western-aligned states; undermine Arab unity by stoking fragmentation from within; and offset the Arab collective opposition to Israel.
This strategy helped Israel survive and thrive in its early years. But it was never defensive. It was always expansionist. Ben-Gurion said so himself: "Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria… Then we bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."
He added: "We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion." And again: "There is no such thing as a final arrangement… not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, not with regard to international agreements."
Elsewhere, he was even more blunt: "The boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concerns of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them."
These were not idle musings. They were foundational tenets. And they still animate Israeli policy today.
As regional dynamics shifted, so too did Israel's targets. Egypt made peace. The Shah of Iran fell. Turkey grew closer to the Palestinians.
The doctrine had to evolve.
But the core goal - fragmentation - remained constant. Israel has applied the formula in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Sudan. However, Syria remains the crown jewel of this strategy.
Why? Because Syria is the most populous Arab state bordering Palestine and Syrians see Palestine not as a foreign cause, but as part of their own historical, geographic, and spiritual territory. Also, Bilad al-Sham is more than geography - it is a shared memory and, quite simply, because Israel is occupying Syrian land.
This is why Israel has spent the past decade cultivating relationships with Kurdish and Druze communities - preparing to use them as levers in a future fragmentation. And now, with Assad gone, that future is here.
A fatal miscalculation
But Syria is no longer the endpoint. It is only the middle.
Israel's ambitions now stretch deeper into the region's "periphery", with Iran and Pakistan firmly in its crosshairs.
Israel's failure to subdue Iran shows it can no longer dictate the regional order Read More »
During the recent war on Iran, Israeli voices - particularly those tied to the Jerusalem Post and neoconservative think tanks - called openly for the country's partition. One editorial urged Trump to: "Embrace regime change… Forge a Middle East coalition for Iran's partition… Offer security guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish, and Balochi regions willing to break away."
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies argued that Iran's multiethnic composition should be treated as a strategic vulnerability to be exploited.
Even Pakistan is now part of the vision. Israeli-affiliated voices speak of reshaping the region "from Pakistan to Morocco".
The Abraham Accords, far from being peace deals, are instruments to normalise this ambition - positioning Israel as the region's economic, security, and technological hub.
Israeli officials have become increasingly open about this. Smotrich outlined a vision of Israel at the heart of a new regional order - effectively a protectorate empire - and made it clear that Arab states "need to pay" Israel for its role in shielding them from threats like Iran and Hamas.
The subtext is unmistakable: Israel provides the violence, and the neighbours pay the tribute. This is not a partnership, it is domination repackaged as diplomacy.
Steven Witkoff, US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, put it more suavely: "If all these countries worked together, it could be bigger than Europe… They're in AI, robotics, blockchain… Everyone is a business guy there."
This is not integration, it is annexation - of economies, of politics, of sovereignty. It is a plan for an Israeli-led bloc that bypasses Europe and challenges global power centres.
Across the Arab world, Israel's genocide in Gaza, its desecration of Damascus, its attacks on Beirut, Sanaa, and Tehran, have unified hearts like no summit ever could
But here lies Israel's fatal miscalculation: the more it expands, the more enemies it creates. It begins by seeking alliances on the periphery, it ends up making the periphery existentially hostile.
Iran, Turkey, Pakistan - once distant rivals - now see Israel not as a nuisance, but as a direct threat.
Across the Arab world, Israel's genocide in Gaza, its desecration of Damascus, its attacks on Beirut, Sanaa, and Tehran, have unified hearts like no summit ever could.
The more Israel acts like a regional empire, the more the region begins to see it as a colonial one.
And colonial empires, history reminds us, do not last. What it sees as fragmentation may yet turn into unification - of resentment, of a shared realisation that the true threat is not Iran or Syria or even political Islam.
It is the doctrine of domination itself. And that doctrine - unlike the missiles Israel fires today - will not go unanswered.
The future Israel dreams of - one of dominance and submission - is not the future the region will allow. Because the peoples of this region have been here before. They have outlived empires. They have buried crusaders, colonialists, and tyrants. And they have learned that the only doctrine worth carrying is the one that binds them together, not tears them apart.
Israel may redraw maps, exploit minorities, strike capitals and starve children, but it cannot bomb its way into permanence. It cannot silence a region forever. It cannot build its future atop the ruins of others - because those ruins remember.
And memory, in this land, is not a wound.
It is a weapon.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.