The Israel Effect
On November 27 – the same day the Hezbollah-Israeli ceasefire was announced, Hayat Tahrir al-Shan and the Syrian National Army [SNA]- an alliance of Sunni jihadists- launched an attack in north-west Syria.
By November 29th evening, they shared pictures of themselves in the historic citadel in the center of Aleppo.
After a portion of Aleppo fell to insurgents in 2012, it had taken Syria’s ruler Bashar al-Assad four years to recapture the country’s second-largest city.
This time around, he lost it in less than four days.
Not wasting time, Iraq Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani blamed Israeli military strikes on the Syrian government for the rebel advance. Really?
After forcing 60,000 Israelis from their homes in northern Israel with a daily barrage of antitank missiles, rockets, mortars, and suicide drones for 11 months from Lebanon, Israel launched “Operation Northern Arrows” against Hezbollah.
Israel’s counter-offensive resulted in exploding Hezbollah beepers, the beheading of Hezbollah’s leadership, and the killing of an estimated 4,000 of their fighters. Hezbollah is now, as a consequence, in no position to send significant forces to prop up Assad.
The severe degradation of Hezbollah’s capabilities and the demonstration of Iran’s vulnerability and penetrability opened an opportunity for the Syrian rebels to retake Aleppo.
An undercut Syria is advantageous to Israel since it would further disrupt the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis, which includes Hamas and the Houthis, with their plans to exterminate Israel.
However, as much as Israel wants to see Assad weakened enough so that Syria cannot be a real threat to Israel for many decades, his complete overthrow would bring turmoil and uncertainty to the area. In the end, a total triumph by either side of the contenders would probably strengthen an anti-Israeli regime.
During the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, when two of the Jewish state’s most ferocious adversaries were undermining one another, then Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Shamir said that Israel could
“wish both sides success”
so that none of them would prevail.