Israel has launched more than 700 attacks on Syria in the months since Islamist rebels toppled the dictator Bashar al-Assad, one of them a recent airstrike that landed just feet from the presidential palace in Damascus.
The chief goals, according to Israeli officials, were to keep weapons from falling into the hands of any hostile group and to prevent such groups from entrenching in southwestern Syria near Israel.
“This is absolutely a lesson from southern Lebanon,” said Uzi Arad, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and now a critic of Mr. Netanyahu’s. Israel spent decades fighting Palestinian and Hezbollah militants who dug into southern Lebanon and launched attacks from there across the border into northern Israel.
Israel has also called the new Syrian government, led by an Islamist rebel faction once linked to Al Qaeda, “extremist.”
But just days after Israel’s May 2 airstrike near the palace in Damascus, President Trump upended decades of American foreign policy by meeting with President Ahmed al-Shara of Syria and announcing plans to lift all sanctions on the country. Mr. Trump said Mr. al-Shara had “a real shot at pulling it together,” after a nearly 14-year civil war fractured his country.
Since that meeting on May 14, the Israeli strikes on Syria have all but stopped.
The United States is Israel’s staunchest and most powerful ally. But Mr. Trump’s surprise embrace of Mr. al-Shara not only offered the new Syrian leader an unexpected lifeline, it also appears to have undercut efforts by the hard-line Israeli government to seize on the instability in Syria and the weakness of the new government to prevent the rise of another anti-Israel neighbor.
“Israel has serious doubts about his true intention and the pragmatic image that he is trying to project,” Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the think tank Institute for National Security Studies, said of Mr. al-Shara.
Before Mr. Trump’s declaration of confidence in the new Syrian leader, Mr. Netanyahu and his top aides in Israel had been determined to deny Mr. al-Shara and his nascent government access to the vast array of heavy weaponry amassed by the Assad regime over its decades in power.
“The most significant part of the Israeli airstrikes in Syria over the past four months was aimed against strategic weapons that were under the possession of the former Syrian Army,” Ms. Valensi said, adding that the Israeli government now appears to be starting to find ways to avoid more confrontation.
“All of this is indicating a direction of de-confliction and de-escalation and more willingness to open a dialogue with the Syrian regime,” she said.
Publicly, Israeli officials have described a number of drivers behind their attacks on Syria.
One was a kinship with the Druse religious minority in Syria, who practice an offshoot of Islam. About 150,000 Druse live in Israel, serve in the military and participate in politics.
In a statement last month, the Israeli military vowed to assist Druse communities in Syria “out of a deep commitment to our Druse brothers in Israel.”
The Druse in Syria have long controlled the strategically located Sweida region in the southwest near Israel, but are not seen as a threat by the Israelis.
In late April, when fierce sectarian clashes broke out between Druse militia fighters and forces linked to Syria’s new government, Israel offered to come to the aid of the Druse.
Israeli leaders said the airstrike near the near the presidential palace was a warning to Mr. al-Shara to stop the attacks on the Druse.
But the motivations behind the hundreds of strikes on Syria over the last months go beyond support for the Druse.
Israel began its attacks on Syria almost immediately after Mr. al-Assad was driven from power on Dec. 8 after a 24-year reign, more than half of it spent fighting a bloody civil war.
Within about a week of Mr. al-Assad’s fall, Israel had conducted more than 450 strikes on Syria, according to the military and humanitarian groups.
The attacks took out the entire Syrian Navy, fighter jets, drones, tanks, air-defense systems, weapons plants and a wide array of missiles and rockets across the country, according to the Israeli military.
The new government in Syria has not attacked Israel since coming to power and has said the country is weary of war and wants to live at peace with all countries.
Mr. Trump’s olive branch to Mr. al-Shara complicates the Israeli strategy in Syria and is the latest example of how American foreign policy is reshaping the Middle East.
“What we don’t want in Syria is in another version of the Houthis,” said Yaakov Amidror, another former national security adviser to Mr. Netanyahu and a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
The Iran-backed Houthis control northern Yemen and have been firing missiles at Israel since the war in Gaza began, in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Mr. al-Shara, who has long since distanced himself from his past connections to Al Qaeda, insists that he wants to preside over a stable regime and be a reliable partner for Western nations.
But Israeli officials are skeptical at best.
Many around Mr. Netanyahu see Syria’s new administration as likely to evolve into a stridently Islamist, anti-Israel government.
In March, Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, said the idea that Syria was moving toward a reasonable government was “ridiculous,” adding that Mr. al-Shara and his cohorts “were jihadists and remain jihadists, even if some of their leaders have donned suits.”
Still, the sheer volume and scope of Israel’s attacks on Syria have drawn criticism from around the world, including from French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with Mr. al-Shara in mid-May.
“You cannot ensure the security of your country by violating the territorial integrity of your neighbors,” Mr. Macron said of Israel.
And even some inside Israel say that a concerted military campaign will not be good for Israel long term.
Tamir Hayman, a former head of intelligence for the Israeli military who is the executive director of the Institute of National Security Studies, said he worries that the strikes are creating the very extremism Israel wants to deter.
“I think we are kind of doing it, sort of from momentum, and should reconsider all of those missions that we are conducting,” he said.
Military experts say part of the motivation behind the Israeli strikes was Mr. Netanyahu’s desire to secure the parts of southwestern Syria closest to the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed.
The fear is that groups far more extreme than the Druse could establish a foothold close to Israel, with the ability to threaten Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights or launch attacks deeper into Israel.
After the Assad regime fell, Israeli troops also seized more Syrian territory.
Another Israeli goal in Syria, according to former military officials and analysts, is to limit Turkey’s influence in Syria.
Israel and Turkey have had a fraught relationship over the years. And President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has moved quickly to establish military and political influence in neighboring Syria, positioning himself as a close ally to the government there.
“If the Turks try to make Syria a base for their military and help the current regime to build capacities that might be used against Israel, there might be conflict,” said Mr. Amidror, the former Israeli national security adviser.
But it may be the United States’ efforts at rapprochement with Syria that end up stymying Israeli military strategy in Syria.
Mr. Trump said in a speech in Saudi Arabia this month that he hopes Syria’s new government will succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace.
“They’ve had their share of travesty, war, killing,” he said. “That’s why my administration has already taken the first steps toward restoring normal relations.”
Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The Times. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years.
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