WhatsappDespite yesterday’s attacks on the Syrian regime forces, the regime’s leader, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa decided to test Israel by sending his forces into Sweida itself. By this morning masses of regime fighters (many of them foreign Jihadists) entered Sweida and began massacring Druze and Christians.
News continued to stream in throughout the morning and by midday today Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yisrael Katz issued the following joint statement:
“Netanyahu and Katz instructed the IDF to immediately attack regime forces and weapons that were introduced into the Sweida area in the Druze Mountains in Syria for the regime’s activities against the Druze – in contrast to the demilitarization policy they decided on of avoiding introducing forces and weapons into the southern Syrian area that endanger Israel.” Israel is committed to preventing harm to the Druze in Syria due to the deep brotherly alliance with our Druze citizens in Israel, and their family and historical ties to the Druze in Syria – and we are working to prevent the Syrian regime from harming them, and to ensure the demilitarization of the area adjacent to our border with Syria.”
Shortly after, the IDF began pounding Syrian regime forces from the air forcing al-Sharaa’s henchmen to pull the heavy equipment like tanks and other armored vehicles out of Sweida. One security source said the following:
“This is an especially high scale of attacks against regime forces in the Druze Mountains. The State of Israel sees this as a test for implementing its policy of demilitarizing southern Syria and its commitment to the Druze.”
In fact, videos are now coming out of Sweida that many of the regime forces and foreign Jihadists are running from Sweida as the IDF attacks increase. Many of these attacks have decimated the vehicles the regime forces used to enter Sweida and others are directly targeting the fighters themselves. The IDF is reportedly using an array of direct attacks from manned fighter jets as well as loitering munitions (assassin drones).
While Israel appears to have pushed back the Syrian regime from bringing its heaviest weapons inside Sweida as well taking out some of the fighters, Jihadists are still inside Sweida. The question now is, will Israel finally be able to convince President Trump to back off pushing any sort of peace plan or normalization with the Syrian government? More than that, if Israel wants to truly secure the 700,000 Druze in Sweida, there is no real way of doing so other than repeating what Israel did with the Druze closest to the Golan Heights and that is to send in the IDF to permanently take control of the area.
They must do this in Sweida and created an autonomous Druze protectorate – a federalized Druze area under Israeli sovereignty. Anything less than this will invite more Jihadist attacks and continued ethnic cleansing of Druze and Christians.
