Syria and the Gaza War

Sunday 6 October 2024

By Nasrin Akhter

As the Middle East teeters on the brink of an all-out war, the consequences of which are likely to be catastrophic and reverberate well beyond the region, what has Syria’s response been to the war in Gaza? As a member of the axis of resistance, bent on rolling back US-Israeli imperial aggression throughout the region, Syria should have come to the aid of Hamas. Unlike Hezbollah though, which was quick to express its solidarity with the movement, launching missile attacks across the border on a near daily basis since the 8 October, Syria has been far more muted in its response to the Gaza war.[1]

Since the start of the war, the Syrian regime has failed to organise any large-scale rallies in support of the Palestinian resistance in any of the areas under the regime’s control.[2] In November, at the joint Arab and Islamic summit held in Saudi Arabia, beyond mere platitudes calling for punitive economic and political measures to be taken against Israel, Syria was conspicuous in its silence failing to mention Hamas at all.[3] At the second Arab summit in Bahrain in May this year, the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, opted out of giving a speech or agreeing to host the next Arab summit, which was supposed to have been held in Damascus, ‘in order to avoid addressing the Gaza war’ altogether.[4]

Instead, far from supporting Hamas, only a month after Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Syrian regime reportedly turned down a request from a delegation of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces to launch attacks against Israel from Syrian soil, which could have opened up a third front against Israel in the occupied Golan Heights, easing substantial pressure on Hamas.[5] And when Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in a suspected Israeli strike in Iran in July, despite a perfunctory statement condemning Israel’s violation of Iranian sovereignty, the regime only made passing reference to the slain Hamas leader, mentioning him only once by name.

Even more astounding is the fact that it took two whole days before the regime issued an official statement of condolence following the assassination of the veteran Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah,[6] killed with a number of other senior Hezbollah and Iranian officials in a massive bombing attack in September, given that the Syrian regime owes its very survival to Hezbollah, whose intervention in the decisive battle for Qusayr in 2014 helped to bring the regime back from the brink of collapse.

Neither has the regime responded to any of the hundreds of Israeli provocations on Syrian territory itself, with Israel launching multiple strikes against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria, knocking out Hezbollah convoys and weapons storage facilities; closing down Damascus and Aleppo international airports through which Iranian arms flow for an unprecedented four times in the space of a month;[7] and killing Iranian personnel in the country with relative impunity, including the assassination of Sayyed Razi Mousavi, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Damascus suburbs of Sayeda Zeinab in December. Syria has also yet to respond to Israel’s illegal attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus killing the senior Iranian commander of the elite Quds force, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and his deputy on 1 April, or retaliate for Israel’s commando raid on a scientific research centre used for developing precision guided missiles and chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Maysaf in the northwest of the country.

Considering that the Syrian regime has long touted itself as the ‘beating heart of Arabism’ and the chief defender of the Palestinian cause, why then has the regime failed to come out in open support of Hamas? In attempting to understand Syria’s silence, three factors appear relevant.

First, the Syrian regime still harbours a great deal of resentment towards Hamas because of its support for the Syrian opposition during the uprising. Having provided a base for Hamas’ political bureau after its expulsion from Jordan in 1999, many in the regime, not least of all Bashar himself, still perceive Hamas’ decision to side with the largely Sunni opposition in 2012 as an act of betrayal. Although there was a reconciliation between the two sides brokered by Iran and Hezbollah in October 2022, in an interview with Sky News Arabia in August 2023, Bashar was still referring to Hamas’ actions as one of ‘betrayal and hypocrisy,’[8] underlying the depths of hostility that remains towards the movement.

Second, after thirteen years of bitter conflict, the Syrian state is in ruins and in no position to withstand an Israeli onslaught in the event of an all-out regional conflagration. A staggering 90 percent of the Syrian population live below the poverty line; a third of the Syrian territory remains outside the hands of the regime’s control; and the regime is still reeling from the aftermath of the devastating 2023 earthquake that left 55,000 dead across Syria and Turkey and tens of thousands displaced. In the south, the regime is also battling with a resurgence of anti-regime protests in the southern city of Sweida and Deraa, capital of the Syrian revolution, re-ignited in August 2023 in response to cuts in basic subsidies and an increase in fuel prices, whilst elsewhere in the country in Homs, Raqqa, and Deir ez-Zor, remnants of ISIS continue to target Syrian security forces and pro-government militia.[9]

Third, and perhaps the most important reason for Syria’s reticence, is the fact that over the past few years, the Syrian regime has been trying to diversify its alliances, slowly shifting away from the axis of resistance, in order to break out of its international isolation and mitigate the effects of economic sanctions and the Caesar Act, passed by the US Congress in 2019.[10] As well as forging a strategic partnership with China, signing up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative,[11] this has meant re-establishing ties with reactionary Gulf Arab states which were severed during the Syrian civil war. In 2018, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has sought to extricate Syria from the Iranian camp and roll back the extent of Iranian influence in the region, became the first Arab state to re-establish its relations with the Syrian regime, re-opening its embassy in Damascus, and the first in the region to welcome Bashar on a foreign visit,[12] paving the way for the restoration of ties with other Arab states (Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia) in a process that culminated in Syria’s readmission to the Arab League in May 2023 after an eleven-year absence.[13]

Significantly, on the 8 October, only a day after Hamas’ cross-border raid, it was the UAE that cautioned Bashar to stay out of the war in Gaza and not to allow Syrian territory to be used as a staging post to launch attacks against Israel.[14] Three days later, on the 11 October, perhaps acting on the advice of the UAE president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Syrian regime took the extraordinary decision to expel the Houthi representative from Damascus – a group which has been at the forefront in the campaign against Israel’s assault on the Palestinian population – handing the embassy back to the pro-Saudi government in Yemen.[15]

Over the course of the war in Gaza, Syria’s normalization and attempts to reintegrate itself back into the international community have only accelerated, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE both appointing ambassadors to Damascus earlier this year, while Italy became the first EU and G7 state to formally restore its relations with Syria in July.[16] For the Syrian regime then, it appears to be using the Gaza war as an opportunity to rehabilitate its image in the eyes of the international community. By staying out of the fighting, and keeping the Golan front quiet, just as it has done since the signing of the disengagement agreement with Israel in 1974, Syria seems to be reprising its role as a source of stability in the region and the only force capable of keeping the peace, in the hopes that the regime will receive much needed aid for economic reconstruction.[17]

Bashar may also be banking on the possibility that by recalibrating Syria’s alliances away from the axis of resistance, and demonstrating a degree of autonomy in its foreign policy from Iran,[18] Syria will be rewarded with a greater role in neighbouring Lebanon, possibly free of Hezbollah influence after the decapitation of many of its rank and file members in a series of deadly Israeli assaults and walkie-talkie and pager attacks, shifting the balance of power back in Syria’s favour after the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country in 2005.[19] Cutting Hezbollah and Iran down to size may well prove popular with the regime’s own constituency and Syrian security officials who perhaps have grown weary of the out-sized influence that Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia have played in Syria’s secular polity since the start of the Syrian conflict.[20]

For now, Iran, which is anxious to avoid a full-blown war with Israel and West, seems to have accepted Syria’s decision not to become embroiled in the fighting, and appears not to be perturbed, as long as it is able to continue to use Syrian territory as a logistical hub and a conduit for the transfer of Iranian arms to Hezbollah in order to restore its deterrence capacity.

In the coming days and weeks though, much will depend on Israel. Led by far-right fascists bent on re-creating the region in its own image in line with the long-standing Zionist dream of establishing a Greater Israel ‘from the river to the sea,’ Israel’s actions over the course of the past year have demonstrated that it will not stop its aggression until it achieves full hegemony over the entire region.

Not content with carrying out what the highest court in the world has called a ‘plausible genocide,’[21] killing over 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza, 70 percent of whom are women and children; laying waste to schools, hospitals, mosques and churches; and displacing 2 million people, Israel is continuing to annex the West Bank in plain sight and has depopulated southern Lebanon in an act of ethnic cleansing, forcing 1 million people, or a fifth of the Lebanese population to flee their homes. It is only a matter of time therefore before Israel turns its sights on Syria. Israel’s recent escalation with an attack on a residential building in the Mezzeh district of Damascus which killed Nasrallah’s son-in-law, Hassan Jafar Qassir;[22] its strike on Russia’s Hmeimim airbase near the coastal city of Lattakia;[23] and the bombing of the Masnaa crossing on the Syrian-Lebanese border through which some 300,000 Syrians refugees have sought to escape to security may well be the first step in this direction.

For Bashar, who much like the Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, is only concerned about one thing – ensuring his own political survival – the decision to continue to sit on the side-lines in the face of Israel’s ongoing aggression may well prove to be fateful for the regime in the long run.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/10/syrias-al-assad-and-supporting-hamas-all-for-political-gain-or-optics

[2] https://syrianobserver.com/foreign-actors/military-security-arrests-three-palestinians-for-organizing-solidarity-protest-with-gaza.html

[3] https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1364007/israel-gaza-war-why-is-assad-sitting-on-the-fence.html https://newlinesmag.com/argument/syria-assad-plan-to-keep-out-of-the-war-in-gaza/

[4] https://www.harmoon.org/en/researches/bashar-al-assad/ https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2024/05/a-less-vibrant-arab-stance-no-speech-from-al-assad-and-no-summit-in-damascus/

[5] https://syrianobserver.com/foreign-actors/al-assad-was-absent-from-nasrallahs-speech.html

[6] https://sana.sy/en/?p=339259

[7] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/11/syria-front-edge-israel-targets-airports-us-hits-iran-linked-groups

[8] https://www.newarab.com/news/hamas-may-reopen-damascus-office-despite-assad-criticism

[9] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/8/isil-kills-30-syrian-forces-in-desert-war-monitor-reports

[10] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/02/congress-pushes-white-house-toughen-anti-assad-policy

[11] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/22/china-to-help-reconstruct-war-battered-syria

[12] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syrian-president-assad-met-dubai-ruler-syrian-presidency-2022-03-18/