Israel’s armed forces launched a fresh wave of air strikes on what it said were military sites inside Syria, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded the “complete demilitarisation” of the south of the country.
Low-flying planes were heard above the capital Damascus before the strikes in the early hours of Wednesday, which a local monitoring group said had hit targeted sites linked to the former regime in Deraa province, including an airport previously struck by Israel. Local media also reported a strike around al-Kiswah, a city some 13 kilometres south of Damascus.
Israeli’s defence minister Israel Katz described the strikes as part of a new policy aimed at demilitarising southern Syria. “Any attempt by the Syrian regime forces and the country’s terrorist organisations to establish themselves in the security zone in southern Syria will be met with fire,” he said in a statement.
The Israel Defense Forces said “the presence of military forces and assets in the southern part of Syria pose a threat to the citizens of Israel”.
Israel has taken advantage of the security vacuum created by the removal of president Bashar al-Assad by Islamist rebels late last year to launch scores of strikes aimed at military targets, including air defences, weapons sites and other equipment.
It has also created and enforced new outposts within the demilitarised border zone, with an unknown number of troops deployed within it for the foreseeable future. This is despite repeated objections from Syria’s new government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the military leader from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that ousted the Assad regime.
This overnight assault came after Netanyahu told Israeli troops on Sunday that he intended to deny access “south of Damascus” to both the new Syrian army and HTS forces, a significant expansion of the area in which the Israeli military is exerting some level of control.
“We demand the complete demilitarisation of southern Syria,” Netanyahu said, reiterating that Israeli troops would remain in Syrian territory “for an indefinite period of time”.
Israeli ground forces have, at times, encroached further into Syrian territory since seizing the five-decade UN-patrolled buffer zone that separates the two countries. They also continue to hold what has come to be called a “security area” in south-west Syria, including the strategic mountaintop of Jabal al Sheikh, known to Israelis as Mount Hermon, in the occupied Golan Heights.
Syria’s new HTS-led government did not respond to a request to confirm the strike, nor did it publish any statements on the attacks.
Yet Syrians have become more vocal about the Israeli presence in their country, demanding an end to the encroachment and the intervention of the international community to thwart its advance.
A statement concluding a government-sponsored national conference on Tuesday decried “Israeli incursion in Syrian lands”, calling it “a flagrant violation of Syrian sovereignty” and demanded Israeli forces’ “immediate and unconditional withdrawal”.
Sharaa has sought to reassure Netanyahu and Israel that his administration and army do not seek conflict, and that they would uphold a 1974 disengagement agreement between the two countries.
