AntiWar.com reports: “Israel launched dozens of airstrikes in Syria overnight Saturday into Sunday despite the new de facto leader of the country, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, saying his group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was not interested in a conflict with Israel.” LBC [Leading Britain’s Conversation] reports: “Israel drops ‘earthquake bomb so big it registered on the Richter scale’ on Syria.” Common Dreams reports: “Netanyahu Moves to Expand Illegal Israeli Settlements in Syrian Golan Heights.”
MOHAMAD BAZZI, mohamad.bazzi@nyu.edu, @BazziNYU
Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University. He just wrote the piece “Syria’s future must be determined by Syrians, not outside powers” for the Guardian.
He writes: “Israel moved quickly to capture Syrian territory and destroy much of Syria’s already-decrepit military capabilities. Israeli troops crossed from the occupied Golan Heights on Sunday into adjacent Syrian territory, occupying a demilitarized ‘buffer zone’ that was established by the UN a year after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. By Tuesday, Israel had also carried out more than 350 airstrikes in Syria over the previous 48 hours, destroying the country’s major military assets: old fighter jets, helicopters, drones, naval ships, radar and air-defense systems and missile stockpiles.
“Regardless of who ultimately controls a future government in Damascus, Israel exploited the chaos following Assad’s fall to make sure that Syria does not retain the military capacity to defend itself. And Israel did so with the tacit support of Joe Biden and his administration, who repeated Israel’s argument that it was acting pre-emptively in self-defense against potential threats from Syrian rebels and jihadists.
“A country invading its neighbor and destroying most of its military within 48 hours would usually be considered an act of aggression under international law. But over the past year, we’ve seen that the international community holds Israel to a different standard from most other countries that might attack their neighbors under the pretext of pre-emptive self-defense.”
Bazzi was featured on the accuracy.org news release “Syria’s Future: Democracy or Subservience to U.S., Turkey and Israel?“