A stone’s throw from the presidential palace, in the Al Mezzeh district, southwest of Damascus, the capital of Syria, three Israeli missiles hit and exposed several buildings in a residential area on Tuesday night. According to information provided by the regime through the state agency Sana, the projectiles, which flew from the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory occupied by Israel, claimed the lives of at least seven civilians. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), with informants on the ground, raised this number to nine: a Yemeni doctor, along with his wife and three children; a young woman also a doctor, and a couple with another minor. Two members of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah were also killed in the attack. According to OSDH accounts, the total number of Israeli bombings on Syrian soil since the beginning of the year now exceeds one hundred, although they go more unnoticed due to the great magnitude of Israeli operations in Gaza and now in Lebanon. That is, a slow-burning offensive that, however, has not obtained a direct response from the Bashar el Assad regime. And this despite causing deaths among the population and the country’s army.
“It constitutes an extension of the crimes of genocide committed by this infidel entity [en referencia al Estado judío] against the Palestinians and Lebanese,” the Syrian Government said this Wednesday in a statement condemning the bombing in the Al Mezzeh neighborhood. “The Syrian Arab Republic […]“, the note said, “highlights the need to take immediate measures to prevent it from continuing.” It does not specify those measures. If the number of victims is confirmed, this Tuesday’s Israeli attack would be one of the deadliest after the one perpetrated in April against the Iranian diplomatic complex, in the same Damascus district. 16 people died, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. So far this year, Israeli bombs have killed 39 civilians, by 257 combatants, including 56 regular soldiers.
The graph compiled by the Acled conflict monitoring project shows in recent years a constant line of violent actions by Israeli state forces in Syrian territory, from the airport and surroundings of northern Aleppo, to the capital and its airfield, plus the region. southwest Syria leading towards Lebanon and Israel. After the attack by the Palestinian Hamas militia on Israeli soil, on October 7, 2023, the curve shot upwards. In the last 12 months, Acled has recorded around 220 Israeli bombings, double what was recorded in the same period in the previous year. The objectives in this offensive are two: the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Your enemies.
The front opened by Israel in Syria is not new, although it has gained intensity in the last year. With a solid enmity built after the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 and the confrontation between the two countries in three conflicts (to the one fought between Arabs and Israelis in that year, we must add the Six Day War, in 1967, and that of Yom Kippur, in 1973), it has been the Syrian civil conflict unleashed since March 2011 that has once again put Syria within range of the Israeli army. The reason: the entry into play of Hezbollah and Iran to help the Assad regime – co-religionists in the Shiite branch of Islam. Israel’s objective, beyond harming Damascus, has been to prevent the Lebanese militia and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from using the Syrian trench for the trafficking and storage of weapons that could be used against them. According to a report by the Center for International Strategic Studies, based in Washington, Hezbollah has between 120,000 and 200,000 missiles stored between Lebanon and Syria.
This volatile scenario is also complicated in a country with almost as many fronts as armed groups, with a north in dispute between Kurdish militias and allies of the Turkish army, with the presence of the Islamic State and related Al Qaeda – on September 29, the aviation American killed 37 terrorists there―, with Russia supporting Damascus, and even Ukrainian troops challenging Moscow’s operations. A warlike drift that has crushed the economy, sovereignty, the army and the Government of El Assad, little inclined in this context to confront Israel now, even more so with the lessons learned from past defeats.
Land raid
The following serves as a sample of the current situation: on September 8, in an unusual operation, Israeli special forces carried out a ground incursion near the town of Masyaf, in the province of Hama, in the western fringes. Syria. The uniformed men, members of the elite Shaldag unit, according to the American publication Axiosdestroyed in the offensive, accompanied by bombing by Israeli aviation in the region, an underground precision missile factory. The sources managed by this medium date the beginning of construction of these facilities to 2018, under the command of Iran and in coordination with Hezbollah and the Syrian regime. At least 18 people lost their lives, including civilians and members of the regular Syrian army.
The equation was the same: the regime denounces the bombings and the death of civilians and soldiers, without taking any retaliation, while Israel remains silent and continues to act under the premise, repeated in the last year by its spokespersons in Defense, that it will attack its enemies wherever they are. And in Syria they are: Hasan Nasrallah himself, leader of Hezbollah annihilated by Israel on September 27, admitted on some occasion that he had lost men in Syrian territory. Some of these fighters under the command of the Lebanese militia were hit in the neighboring Arab country during the Israeli operation with searches and walkie talkies developed in the middle of last month.
The presence of the enemy north of the Golan Heights – Israel illegally annexed two thirds of this Syrian territory in 1981 – was already evident to the Israeli army before October 7, 2023. But the start, a day later, of a systematic campaign of launching rockets and missiles towards the north of the Jewish State from Hezbollah positions, has intensified and made more lethal the Israeli offensive in pursuit of its arsenals and members in Syria. The risk of it going further is such that this Thursday, when asked in Moscow by a journalist, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov warned of the catastrophic effects that broader military action by Israel could have.