US officials express anger over Israel's Syria strikes

Arab News

21-07-2025

LONDON: White House officials have expressed frustration over Israel's bombing of Syria, The Times reported.
Israel carried out a series of attacks on government targets in the Syrian Arab Republic last week, including a strike on a tank convoy and the shelling of the Defense Ministry in Damascus.
US diplomats warned Israel to cease its intervention, which it claimed to be conducting in support of Syria's Druze minority.
Clashes between local Bedouin and Druze forces had broken out in Syria's southern province of Sweida, with the country's government sending troops to quell the violence.
One White House official told Axios that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time. This could undermine what (US President Donald) Trump is trying to do.'
Trump lifted sanctions on Syria earlier this year after meeting President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who has pledged to unite his country and bring an end to more than a decade of violence.
The US brokered a ceasefire last week that appeared to stop the clashes in Sweida, where more than 1,000 people were killed over seven days, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The violence was reportedly sparked by a series of kidnappings targeting members of various faiths, clans and tribal groups in the province.
Before launching strikes, Israel claimed that Syrian government forces were involved in targeting the Druze.
Israel has its own community of Druze, numbering about 130,000, and some Syrian members of the faith traveled to meet family members there to escape the violence in Sweida.
After the overthrow of Bashar Assad's regime last year, Israel sent forces into Sweida to establish a buffer zone. The province borders Syria's Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Another US official told Axios: 'Netanyahu is sometimes like a child who just won't behave.'
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday urged Al-Sharaa to halt the violence in his country, which he described as 'horrifying and dangerous.'
The 'rape and slaughter of innocent people, which has and is still occurring, must end,' Rubio said on X, adding that Syrian authorities 'must hold accountable and bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks.'
White House officials also described growing consternation over Israel's war on Gaza, especially after the shelling of the Palestinian enclave's only Catholic church last week. The attack killed three Palestinians.
A senior American official told Axios after the church strike: 'The feeling is that every day there is something new … what the f***?'
Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, also delivered surprise public criticism in the wake of an arson attack on a Byzantine-era church in the occupied West Bank over the weekend.
'To commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship, it is an act of terror, and it is a crime,' he said. 'There should be consequences.'
He also demanded 'accountability' from Israel after a Palestinian American was killed in the West Bank last week.