A Syrian flag. (Credit: AFP)
What are the reasons for this escalation and what reactions has it provoked within the ‘Axis of Resistance’?
What are the targets in Syria?
Israel has been intensifying its attacks on Syria since Sept. 26, shortly after the start of the open war in Lebanon between the Israeli army and Hezbollah.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has recorded 86 attacks that killed 39 civilians as well as 199 Syrian soldiers or Iran-backed fighters from Hezbollah and from Iraqi or Palestinian factions.
On Nov. 20, three strikes on Palmyra killed 106 fighters, said the U.K.-based observatory, which has a vast network of sources inside Syria.
According to the NGO, this is the heaviest single-day toll in this type of attack since the Syrian war erupted in 2011.
The casualties included 73 pro-Iran Syrian fighters, 29 non-Syrian fighters, mostly from Iraq’s Al-Nujaba group, and four Lebanese members of Hezbollah.
On Monday night, Israel bombed the Joussieh crossing on the Syria-Lebanon border, the latest in a wave of attacks targeting such crossings.
Given the high number of strikes, “Syria today has become a de facto part of Israel’s battlefield,” SOHR director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
He said that Israel has mainly hit official or informal border crossings, residential apartments, particularly in Damascus, the headquarters of Iran-backed groups and Hezbollah weapons depots.
Why this escalation?
Since the beginning of the Syrian war, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting the regime forces and Iran-backed groups.
Israel occasionally confirms these strikes, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
In the past two months, the Israeli army has made it clear that its aim was also to prevent Hezbollah from “transferring” weapons used in attacks against Israel from Syria to Lebanon.
On Monday, it said the bombing of Joussieh was aimed at targeting “Syrian regime smuggling routes” on the border.
Since the beginning of the war in Lebanon, “the deterrent balance that had existed between Hezbollah and Israel has broken down,” according to analyst Sam Heller.
Without “fear of real reprisal” from Hezbollah, “Israel is now bombing Lebanon at will, and additionally hitting what are purportedly Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria,” he said.
“This all seems like an attempt by Israel to sustainably weaken Hezbollah” by targeting its “logistical lines via Syria.”
What are the reactions?
Damascus condemned Israel's “repeated aggressions,” accusing it of seeking to "widen the scope of its aggression to include countries of the region.”
Apart from these “traditional condemnations,” Heller explained, Damascus “does not have many other options: Syria is exhausted by more than a decade” of war and economic collapse.
“Syria's role is not to attack Israel, but rather to serve ... as a supply line from Iran and Iraq to Hezbollah,” a source close to Hezbollah told AFP.
Tehran and Baghdad fear that Israeli strikes could hit their territory, even in the event of a truce in Lebanon, said the source.
Israeli diplomacy has recently called the U.N. Security Council to take “immediate action regarding the activity of the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq,” warning that Israel “has the right to defend itself.”
The Iraqi armed groups forming the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” have claimed near-daily drone attacks on Israel in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon. The Israeli army announced that most of the attacks were intercepted.
In early October, however, a drone killed two Israeli soldiers in the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied and annexed by Israel.
After the Israeli diplomacy’s letter to the U.N. Security Council, Iraq reacted by accusing Israel of looking for “pretexts” to justify a “planned aggression” against Iraqi territory and said that it was working to “prevent” its territory from being used “as a base for attacks” against other nations.
“For more than a year, Iraq has managed to stay relatively insulated from this wider regional war,” confirmed analyst Renad Mansour, adding that Iran and the United States also pushed for this because “they both want stability in Iraq.”
But “in this time of transition between U.S. President Biden and Trump, the Iraqi government is concerned that Netanyahu has even more of a free hand to go after all of the axis of resistance,” he said.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.
