{"id":6125,"date":"2024-12-19T01:09:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T23:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6125"},"modified":"2024-12-19T01:09:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T23:09:22","slug":"israel-damascus-syria-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2024-12-19\/israel-damascus-syria-fate\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel, not the \u2018liberators\u2019 of Damascus, will decide Syria\u2019s fate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Syria\u2019s future under al-Qaeda spin-off HTS will come in two flavours only. Either submit and collude like the West Bank, or end up wrecked like Gaza<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\"\"\n

There has been a flurry of \u201cWhat next for Syria?\u201d articles in the wake of dictator Bashar al-Assad\u2019s hurried exit from Syria and the takeover of much of the country by al-Qaeda\u2019s rebranded local forces.<\/p>\n

Western governments and media have been quick to celebrate the success of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), even though the group is designated a terrorist organisation in the United States, Britain and much of Europe.<\/p>\n

Back in 2013, the US even placed a \u00a310 million bounty<\/a> on its leader, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, for his involvement with al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) and for carrying out a series of brutal attacks on civilians.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, he might have expected to end up in an orange jumpsuit in the notorious, off-the-grid detention and torture facility run by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay. Now he is positioning himself as Syria\u2019s heir apparent, seemingly with Washington\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, before either HTS or al-Julani can be tested in their new roles overseeing Syria, the West is hurrying to rehabilitate them. The US and UK are both moving to overturn HTS\u2019s status as a proscribed organisation.<\/p>\n

To put the extraordinary speed of this absolution in perspective, recall that Nelson Mandela, feted internationally for helping to liberate South Africa from apartheid rule, was removed<\/a> from Washington\u2019s terrorist watch list only in 2008 \u2013 18 years after his release from prison.<\/p>\n

Similarly, western media are helping al-Julani to rebrand himself as a statesman-in-the-making, airbrushing his past atrocities, by transitioning from using his nom de guerre to his birth name, Ahmed al-Sharaa.<\/p>\n

Piling on pressure<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Stories of prisoners being freed from Assad\u2019s dungeons and of families pouring on to the streets in celebration have helped to drive an upbeat news agenda and obscure a more likely dismal future for newly \u201cliberated\u201d Syria \u2013 as the US, UK, Israel, Turkey and Gulf states jostle for a share of the pie.<\/p>\n

Syria\u2019s status looks sealed as a permanently failed state.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s bombing raids \u2013 destroying hundreds of critical infrastructure sites across Syria \u2013 are designed precisely towards that end.<\/p>\n

Within days, the Israeli military was boasting<\/a> it had destroyed 80 per cent of Syria\u2019s military installations. More have gone since.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Israel unleashed 16 strikes<\/a> on Tartus, a strategically important port where Russia has a naval fleet. The blasts were so powerful, they registered 3.5 on the Richter scale.<\/p>\n

During Assad\u2019s rule, Israel chiefly rationalised its attacks on Syria \u2013 coordinating them with Russian forces supporting Damascus \u2013 as necessary to prevent the flow of weapons overland from Iran to its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

But that is not the goal currently. HTS\u2019s Sunni fighters have vowed to keep Iran and Hezbollah \u2013 the Shiite \u201caxis of resistance\u201d against Israel \u2013 out of Syrian territory.<\/p>\n

Israel has prioritised instead targeting Syria\u2019s already beleaguered military \u2013 its planes, naval ships, radars, anti-aircraft batteries and missile stockpiles \u2013 to strip the country of any offensive or defensive capability. Any hope of Syria maintaining a semblance of sovereignty is crumbling before our eyes.<\/p>\n

These latest strikes come on top of years of western efforts to undermine Syria\u2019s integrity and economy. The US military controls Syria\u2019s oil and wheat production areas, plundering these key resources with the help of a Kurdish minority. More generally, the West has imposed punitive sanctions on Syria\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

It was precisely these pressures that hollowed out Assad\u2019s government and led to its collapse. Now Israel is piling on more pressure to make sure any newcomer faces an even harder task.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Maps of post-Assad Syria, like those during the latter part of his beleaguered presidency, are a patchwork of different colours, with Turkey and its local allies seizing territory in the north, the Kurds clinging on to the east, US forces in the south, and the Israeli military encroaching from the west.<\/p>\n

This is the proper context for answering the question of what comes next.<\/p>\n

Two possible fates<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Syria is now the plaything of a complex of vaguely aligned state interests. None have Syria\u2019s interests as a strong, unified state high on their list.<\/p>\n

In such circumstances, Israel\u2019s priority will be to promote sectarian divisions and stop a central authority from emerging to replace Assad.<\/p>\n

This has been Israel\u2019s plan stretching back decades, and has shaped the thinking of the dominant foreign policy elite in Washington since the rise of the so-called neoconservatives under President George W Bush in the early 2000s. The aim has been to Balkanise<\/a> any state in the Middle East that refuses to submit to Israeli and US hegemony.<\/p>\n

Israel cares only that Syria is riven by internal feuding and power-plays. Beginning in 2013, Israel ran a covert programme to arm and fund at least 12 different rebel factions, according to a 2018 article<\/a> in Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n

In this regard, Syria\u2019s fate is being modelled on that of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

There may be a choice but it will come in no more than two flavours. Syria can become the West Bank, or it can become Gaza.<\/p>\n

So far, the indications are that Israel is gunning for the Gaza option. Washington and Europe appear to prefer the West Bank route, which is why they have been focusing on the rehabilitation of HTS.<\/p>\n

In the Gaza scenario, Israel keeps pounding Syria, depriving the rebranded al-Qaeda faction or any other group of the ability to run the country\u2019s affairs. Instability and chaos reign.<\/p>\n

With Assad\u2019s legacy of secular rule destroyed, bitter sectarian rivalries dominate, cementing Syria into separate regions. Feuding warlords, militias and crime families battle it out for local dominance.<\/p>\n

Their attention is directed inwards, towards strengthening their rule against rivals, not outwards towards Israel.<\/p>\n

\u2018Back to the Stone Age\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There would be nothing new about this outcome for Syria in the worldview shared by Israel and the neocons. It draws on lessons Israel believes it learnt in both Gaza and Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Israeli generals spoke of returning Gaza \u201cto the Stone Age\u201d long before they were in a position to realise that goal with the current genocide there. Those same generals first tested their ideas on a more limited scale in Lebanon, pummelling the country\u2019s infrastructure under the so-called \u201cDahiya\u201d doctrine.<\/p>\n

Israel believed such indiscriminate wrecking sprees offered a double benefit. Overwhelming destruction forced the local population to concentrate on basic survival rather than organise resistance. And longer term, the targeted population would understand that, given the severity of the punishment, any future resistance to Israel should be avoided at all costs.<\/p>\n

Back in 2007, four years before the uprising in Syria erupted, a leading articulator of the neocon agenda, Caroline Glick, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, set out Syria\u2019s imminent fate.<\/p>\n

She explained<\/a> that any central authority in Damascus had to be destroyed. The reasoning: \u201cCentralised governments throughout the Arab world are the primary fulminators of Arab hatred of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cHow well would Syria contend with the IDF [Israeli military] if it were simultaneously trying to put down a popular rebellion?\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, better still, Syria could be turned into another failed state like Libya after Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s ousting and killing in 2011 with the help of Nato. Libya has been run by warlords ever since.<\/p>\n

Notably, both Syria and Libya \u2013 along with Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon and Iran \u2013 were on a hit list<\/a> drawn up in Washington in the immediate aftermath of 9\/11 by US officials close to Israel.<\/p>\n

All but Iran are now failed or failing states.<\/p>\n

Security contractor<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The other possible outcome is that Syria becomes a larger version of the West Bank.<\/p>\n

In that scenario, HTS and al-Julani are able to convince the US and Europe that they are so supine, so ready to do whatever they are told, that Israel has nothing to fear from them.<\/p>\n

Their rule would be modelled on that of Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the much-reviled Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. His powers are little greater than those of the head of a municipal council, overseeing schools and collecting the rubbish.<\/p>\n

His security forces are lightly armed \u2013 effectively a police force \u2013 used for internal repression and incapable of challenging Israel\u2019s illegal occupation. Abbas has described as \u201csacred\u201d his service to Israel in preventing Palestinians from resisting their decades-long oppression.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian Authority\u2019s active collusion was on show again at the weekend when its security forces killed<\/a> a resistance leader in Jenin wanted by Israel.<\/p>\n

Al-Julani could similarly be cultivated as a security contractor. Largely thanks to Israel, Syria now has no army, navy or air force. It has only lightly armed factions such as HTS, other rebel militias like the misnamed Syrian National Army, and Kurdish groups.<\/p>\n

Under CIA and Turkish tutelage, HTS could be strengthened, but only enough to repress dissent in Syria.<\/p>\n

HTS would have powers but on licence. Its survival would depend on keeping things quiet for Israel, both through a reign of intimidation against other Syrian groups, including the Palestinian refugee population, who threaten to fight Israel, and by keeping out other regional actors resisting Israel, such as Iran and Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

And as with Abbas, al-Julani\u2019s rule in Syria would be territorially limited.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian leader has to contend with the fact that large swaths of the West Bank have been carved out as Jewish settlements under Israeli rule, and that he has no access to critical resources, including acquifers, agricultural land and quarries.<\/p>\n

Off-limits to HTS would likely be Kurdish areas policed by Turkey and the US, where much of the country\u2019s oil is located, as well as a swath of terrority in Syria\u2019s south-west that Israel has invaded over the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

It is widely assumed Israel will annex these Syrian lands to extend its illegal occupation of the Golan, which it took from Syria in 1967.<\/p>\n

\u2018Love\u2019 for Israel<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Al-Julani understands only too well the options ahead of him. Perhaps not surprisingly, he appears far keener to become a Syrian Abbas than a Syrian Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader killed by Israel in October.<\/p>\n