Israel and the US appear to be on divergent paths in Syria.
While the allies aren’t on a collision course yet, current and former Arab, US and Israeli officials say their differences could complicate the Trump administration’s grand diplomatic plans.
On Wednesday, Israel carried out powerful air strikes on Damascus, blowing up a part of the defence ministry and hitting near the presidential palace, as it framed its attacks as an effort to protect Syria’s Druze minority.
The strikes marked a significant Israeli escalation against the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa and came despite his warming ties with the US and his burgeoning security contacts with Israel.
“Israel and the US are definitely not on the same page,” Dareen Khalifa, a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, told Middle East Eye.
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Israel claimed that its attack was in response to requests from Druze inside Israel for intervention, where the minority is around 150,000-strong.
Prominent Syrian Druze, Sheikh Hikmat Salaman al-Hajri, who is seen as close to Israel, did in fact call for international support, saying the minority faced a “total war of extermination”. Other Syrian Druze leaders, however, have rejected Israel’s intervention.
“There is definitely genuine Druze pressure inside Israel to intervene,” a US diplomat in the region who has been monitoring the fighting told MEE.
“Regardless of whether the pressure is real or not, the outcome is the same: a zone of influence for Israel in Syria. That means telling the Syrians where they can and cannot put their tanks.”
When asked to comment on Israel’s strikes and the instability plaguing the war-ravaged country, US President Donald Trump declined to comment and instead deferred reporters to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Earlier in the day, Rubio tried to characterise the strikes and worsening security situation as a simple “misunderstanding”.
‘All roads lead to Damascus’
Israel’s move to assert itself as the dominant power protecting the Druze in a swath of southern Syria clashes with the visions of the Trump administration.
Earlier this year, the US rejected Israeli pleas to keep more troops in northeastern Syria, MEE revealed. Kurdish fighters there are lobbying for more autonomy.
The Trump administration wants to reduce its military footprint in Syria and ensure the country – a tapestry of Christians, Muslims, Druze and Kurds – has one undisputed power centre backed up by US allies like Nato member Turkey, cash-rich Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Tom Barrack, Trump’s billionaire, Lebanese-American envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey, waxed on about Syria just last week in front of reporters.
“You have the Druze that want it to be Druze land. You have the Alawites who want it to be Alawite land. You have the Kurds who want it to be Kurdistan,” Barrack said. “What Syria is saying, what Damascus is saying, that’s not going to happen – all roads lead to Damascus.”
‘In Netanyahu’s mind, undermining the Syrian state is way more important than any normalisation’
– Alon Pinkas, former Israeli diplomat
“There’s not an indication on our part that there’s going to be a separate Alawite state or a separate Druze state. There’s Syria,” he said.
To be sure, Syria has been battered by sectarian violence since Sharaa, a former leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and before that al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, ousted former President Bashar al-Assad last year.
In March, Syrian security forces killed hundreds of Alawites – the sect to which Assad belonged – along the Mediterranean coast.
In June, at least 25 people were killed in a bombing at Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church. Sharaa was criticised for his handling of the fallout.
While the Trump administration condemned the attacks, it is focused on a speedy lifting of sanctions and assuaging sectarian tensions. Barrack has praised Gulf investments in Syria.
And if there is an outside military power that the US has leaned towards recognising in Syria, it is Turkey, experts say.
MEE revealed that the US was instrumental in pressing Turkey and Israel to establish a deconfliction line in Syria earlier this year.
‘Default mode’
For Trump, Gulf investment and Turkish buy-in complement the normalisation of ties between Syria and Israel.
When Trump met Sharaa in Riyadh in May, he asked him to join the Abraham Accords – the diplomatic agreements between Israel, Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE that Trump sees as one of his signature foreign policy achievements.
Barrack told The New York Times that the US has supported back-channel talks between Israel and Sharaa’s government, which have reportedly been held in Baku, Azerbaijan – Turkey’s closest ally. The UAE has also mediated talks between the two, according to Reuters.
Talk of Syria and Israel striking an agreement reached a crescendo after the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict ended. Posters sprang up in Tel Aviv showing Trump, Netanyahu and Sharaa along with other Arab leaders.
How Turkey and Qatar are playing an outsized role in Trump’s new Middle East
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“This puts to shame the nonsense of normalisation,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, told MEE.
“In Netanyahu’s mind, undermining the Syrian state is way more important than any normalisation.”
Diplomats in the region say that the Israeli strikes are a direct rejection of Trump’s efforts.
“The Israelis will go along with Trump talking peace, but they prefer Syria divided,” an Arab diplomat told MEE. “The minute they got the opportunity, they went back to default mode – tear up Syria.”
Israel’s willingness to bomb Damascus as they were talking to the Syrians does reflect a real difference of opinion between the two allies on Sharaa, the US and Arab diplomats told MEE.
“The Trump administration has been much more willing to give Sharaa a chance with Turkish and Saudi backing. For the Israelis, Sharaa is not genuine – he is a jihadist,” the US diplomat told MEE.
After Assad’s removal, Israel launched widespread strikes on Syria. Netanyahu sent soldiers to occupy a swath of southwestern Syria that includes a United Nations buffer zone in the Golan Heights. Israel seized much of the strategic plateau in the 1967 war.
Arab and US diplomats say the first step to any normalisation would be reinstating a 1974 disengagement agreement that created the buffer zone along the two countries’ borders.
Some of the biggest advocates of normalisation now say it is in jeopardy.
“Israel’s unnecessary strikes must cease immediately,” Republican Congressman Joe Wilson said on Wednesday, before calling the strikes “suicidal for Israel”.
