Perhaps the Syrian government’s worst-kept secret has been its exploitation of the Palestinian cause.
At the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October last year, while some suspected that Syria could join the war against Israel and open another front, none of the Syrians I had been in touch with believed President Bashar al-Assad would become a party to the conflict—especially not on behalf of Hamas.
Perhaps the Syrian government’s worst-kept secret has been its exploitation of the Palestinian cause.
At the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October last year, while some suspected that Syria could join the war against Israel and open another front, none of the Syrians I had been in touch with believed President Bashar al-Assad would become a party to the conflict—especially not on behalf of Hamas.
“The government paints itself as if it is fighting Israel, but that has always been a lie,” Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat, recently told me over the phone from Washington, D.C., where he has been living since he defected. “Bashar, and his father before him—they have had a silent pact to keep the peace on the border with Israel, and that’s why Syria will not get involved in the Gaza conflict.” This view has resonated among hundreds of Syrians and Palestinians I have spoken with over the years. For the Syrian government, Israel mostly serves as an object of public relations—an easy scapegoat to blame for its own failings, and to try to win favor from its Sunni population and Arabs across the region.
When conflict between Israel and Hamas flared up in the past, the Syrian government encouraged major protests to show support for Palestinians, but this time the demonstrations were far and few, and support for the resistance was muted. “The government hasn’t allowed any major protests against Israel, and no calls for supporting fellows in the axis of resistance,” Barabandi said, adding that it “is a sign” that Syria not only wants to stay out of the conflict but wants to be clearly seen as staying out of it.
Despite regular Israeli bombings on Syrian territory—mostly on Iranian officials and assets—and a promise to stand by Palestinians, the Assad government has stood on the sidelines since the current conflict erupted more than a year ago.
Experts and observers say Assad’s priority is the survival of his regime and presiding over Syria’s deprived masses. And even though he has crushed the rebellion, the country remains split and roughly 40 percent of Syrian land remains outside government control.
According to an unnamed western diplomat who spoke to AFP, Israel has warned Assad’s government that “if Syria was used against them they would destroy his regime.” One report suggested that the residence of Assad’s brother had been bombed by Israelis, although there was no confirmation.
“If he makes the mistake of actively joining the axis, the consequences could be very swift,” said Eran Lerman, formerly Israel’s deputy national security advisor. “For now, I think Assad is very reluctant to be drawn in. Although [the Syrian government] are Arab nationalists, Palestine is way down on their list of priorities. First is survival, and I think Assad’s military has an idea about how it fares in comparison to ours.”
Assad has several other reasons for staying out of the conflict. He hopes to be rewarded for his restraint and at least soften the West to the possibility of diluting sanctions as he places himself alongside the United Arab Emirates—a key player in rehabilitating Assad’s government, which itself normalized ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords. Within days after Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Axios reported that the UAE warned Assad to not get entangled in the war.
Furthermore, Assad is in no mood to forgive Hamas for siding with Syrian rebels in the 2011-2012 revolution. When Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh inside Iran, Syria did not offer a detailed eulogy for the slain Hamas leader even though it officially reconciled with the group in 2022. In an interview last year, Assad said it was “too early for things to go back to the way they were” with Hamas. This presumably works for Arab monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whom Assad is banking on to fund Syria’s reconstruction and who want to see Hamas vanquished and the challenge posed by political Islam checked.
Assad hopes that he can earn brownie points in the West, especially as the appetite to deport Syrians in Europe grows. Led by Italy, eight European countries are seeking some sort of cooperation with Damascus to make sure Syrians can return. The European Commission is even mulling whether it should nominate a new special envoy to Syria that makes the Assad government acceptable in a way. Assad has already reentered the Arab league and been embraced by all countries, other than Qatar, in the region.
And while Assad cannot directly push out the Iranians and seem ungrateful for the wartime support they offered his government, Israel seems to have had a free hand to bomb Iranian assets and assassinate its generals inside Syria. “We have had an understanding with Russia that we will do what we need to do” in the Syrian airspace, Lerman said. Some reports suggest that Iran has withdrawn forces from southern Syria—a hub of Iranian proxies that are predominantly Hezbollah—to cut its losses as Russian forces return to the region “in theory, to curb spillovers of violence from Israel to Syria.” Russian posts were set up after Israel assassinated high-profile Iranian generals in Syria back in April, which led to concerns that the war may extend to Syria. (Iran’s diminishing presence in Syria is a windfall for Assad’s Russian patron, who doesn’t wish to share Syria with Tehran.)
Barabandi said Russia could also turn a blind eye to Israeli attacks on Iranian militias in southern Syria as it has violations of Syrian airspace.
“When Hezbollah started to go to Golan to attack Israel, Assad’s message was, ‘I don’t control them,’ and that the Syrian army will not participate,” Barabandi said, as he explained why Russians were deployed on the front line with Israel. “But cleaning the south of Hezbollah is good for Israel, and for Russia because Iran will be weaker. Once Israelis are done, Russia could be the guarantor that they leave Syrian territory.”
Assad has maneuvered himself in a position where even Iran and Hezbollah made room for him to stay out of the war. Experts say Iran can only exercise leverage over Syria if the current government survives. Even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave Assad an easy pass during one of his early speeches in the conflict.
“We cannot demand more from Syria, and we must be realistic. The country has been entangled in a global war for 12 years. Despite its challenging circumstances, it lends support to the resistance and bears the consequences,” Nasrallah said in November 2023.
Syria has remained out of the conflict and tried not to aggravate Israel. But it has also tried to placate Iran by letting it use Syrian territory to supply weapons to Hezbollah. Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said that Assad has continued “to help arm Hezbollah and transport arms to Lebanon from Iran,” which is why Israel has been bombing Syria, “destroying missile factories, assassinating Iranian generals, and blowing up arms convoys.”
And yet, there is no denying that Syrian absence from the ongoing conflict is a glaring failure of Iran’s “unity of the arenas” strategy that envisaged a coordinated response of all its partners in the axis of resistance. It exposes how political survival comes before ideological alignment and that, in its current state, Syria is not going to be a problem for Israel.
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