Israel's policy toward the Syrian regime lacks a long-term objective and vision, and many of its actions have increased Syrian hostility toward Israel, Elizabeth Tsurkov told The Jerusalem Post.
Tsurkov, a Doctoral student at Princeton and Research Fellow at New Lines Institute (a Washington-based think tank), has spent over a decade researching Syria and has written extensively on Israel's role during the Syrian civil war, supporting Syrians near the border.
She was kidnapped by Kata'ib Hezbollah while doing research in Iraq in March 2023 and was held for 900 days until being freed in September 2025. She brings a unique level of expertise on Syria, informed by years of focused work on the country.
“The current Israel policy in Syria is rudderless. There is no clear objective for Israel's presence. What is the long-term goal? What is the long-term vision? What type of rule does Israel want to exist in Damascus and what type of relationship it wants with that rule,” Tsurkov asked.
Tensions between Israel and Syria have risen in the wake of an Israeli raid last week. On Friday, the IDF said that “following intelligence information gathered in the past several weeks, IDF troops of the 55th Reserve Brigade under the command of the 210th Division, went on an operation to apprehend suspects from the Jaama Islamiya terrorist organization.”
The raid targeted the village of Beit Jinn, at the foot of Mount Hermon, several miles from the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan. The operation reflected an Israeli policy that has expanded since the fall of the Assad regime nearly a year ago, on December 8, 2024. Israel has increased its activity in Syria and moved into the buffer zone that had defined the ceasefire line since 1974.
The IDF said suspects were operating in Beit Jinn and had “advanced terror attacks against Israeli civilians.” During the night raid, troops came under fire and returned fire. “As a result of the incident, two reserve officers and a reservist were severely injured,” the IDF said.
Concerns of escalation in Syria against new regime
The incident has raised concerns about potential escalation. Some Israeli politicians have called for a tougher policy toward the new Syrian government of Ahmed al-Sharaa.
In the wake of the raid on Beit Jinn, Tsurkov wrote on X/Twitter about one of the Syrians who was killed in the raid and how he was previously linked to Syrian rebels against the Assad regime.
She noted that “Israel supported over a dozen of [the] factions in southern Syria until the Assad regime and foreign Shia militias took over the area in 2018.”
She added that one of the men killed in the IDF raid “was previously a member of an opposition faction that was supported by Israel for years in the town, under the command of Iyad Kamal, better known as ‘Moro.’
The faction received weapons, and the town's inhabitants received humanitarian assistance and treatment in Israeli hospitals.”
Beit Jinn was placed under siege by the Assad regime. Israel continued to help the locals, she writes, “in an attempt to prevent the town from falling [to the Assad regime]. It eventually did fall, leading to the forcible displacement of opposition supporters from the town to northern Syria.”
Now this same village that was once attacked by the Assad regime and whose residents were supported by Israel is in the spotlight again.
It appears to be in Israel’s cross-hairs as a potential threat. How did this happen?
“The events in Beit Jinn represent an unprecedented escalation. This is the deadliest event, or firefight, that has occurred since the Israeli invasion of southern Syria,” Tsurkov said.
“The extent of destruction is also unprecedented by the Israeli bombing campaign of the village after the injury of the Israeli soldiers. And it is a testament to not setting a clear policy objective for Israel’s presence in southern Syria.”
She said that these kinds of clashes will continue as long as people near the border feel their lives are impacted negatively by Israel. “All of this is something that creates a great deal of anger in these areas that were [in the past] incredibly pro-Israel, particularly Beit Jinn.”
She noted that the goodwill Israel “earned in Beit Jinn is unparalleled to any other town in Syria. No other town endured such a blockade during which Israel saved the lives of residents there and attempted to prevent it from falling. The fact that the population there is turning on Israel is because Israel changed its policies, which once supported the population, and it is now raiding and harming livelihoods. All these people who once had goodwill towards Israel have now soured on it, and it’s not because they suddenly became radical; it is because Israel changed its policies.”
After the fall of Assad, the IDF carried out airstrikes in Syria against sites that the regime had controlled.
This was aimed at destroying military assets of the Assad regime so they wouldn’t threaten Israel. The group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham led the November 2024 offensive against Assad’s regime, which led to its fall.
The new leader of Syria became Ahmed al-Shara’a, the head of HTS. Israeli officials and politicians have accused Shara’a and the new government of being “jihadists.” This has been used to justify operations near the Golan that view Syria as a potential threat. At the same time, the US has embraced Shara’a, and he has received support around the region and around the world.
US Central Command said on Saturday that it had worked with the new Syrian government to destroy fifteen ISIS sites in Syria. As such, the US wants to work with Damascus, even as Israeli tensions grow on the border.
Viewing Sharaa, HTS as jihadists is incorrect, Tsurkov argues
Tsurkov said that it's incorrect to view Sharaa and HTS as jihadists. “Sharaa and the top leadership of HTS has broken with jihadism and Salafis many years ago, when they were ruling Idlib. Many of the founding principles of Jihadism of Salafism were abandoned by them. They cooperated with the Turks, which is a secular state in the view of jihadists. They stopped enforcing religious moral laws on the population, they removed the most radical elements from their midst; assassinated some of them, jailed others, simply expelled them, and changed the curriculum to [steer] their fighters away from jihadist texts.”
The Syrian leadership needs to be understood from a different perspective, she says. It is different than whatever past roots it may have in extremism.
“It needs to be understood as a deeply pragmatic leadership that is interested in, above all else, power, and therefore it understood that it cannot rule over the population even in Idlib which is quite conservative while applying jihadist principles, that this was impossible.” She added that the “top concern of the [Syrian] leadership is preserving power and therefore they need to be understood as prioritizing their survival of the rule. Any kind of conflict with Israel, any kind of actions from uncontrolled groups against Israel would lead to an Israeli reaction and destabilize their rule, and thus they would do anything in their power to prevent such an attack from happening.”
The Syrian government is therefore pragmatic. Israel’s policy, however, appears less so. As she says, it is “rudderless.” Israel’s policies, such as the Beit Jinn raid, are angering Syrian society, and they are becoming more hostile to Israel. As such, opportunities for peace or an agreement are being potentially squandered.
This is happening “after many Syrians credited Israel for weakening the Iranian axis, which allowed for the fall of the Assad regime. And currently, the negotiations for the security agreement with Damascus are stuck. From my understanding based on sources in Israel, it is stuck because of Israel, because of basically decisions of the political echelon which prefers to maintain Israel's occupation of southern Syria,” Tsurkov added.
She said the current operations in southern Syria don’t bring a tactical gain and are “now producing violent counter reactions that could turn southern Syria into a new front when it wasn't one to begin with.”
She noted that “Israel has maintained its forces in Syria for almost a year, and for a very long time, Syrians just tolerated this despite the terrible effects on their livelihood, the arrests that are taking place. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israel went in saying that it needs to fend off threats. These threats did not exist, but Israel, through its actions, is now creating the ground for a popular resistance movement.”
The authorities in Damascus also can’t prevent this because they can’t deploy forces to the border because Israel has warned them not to. Israel has demanded that the area near the border be demilitarized, essentially creating a power vacuum where threats emerge.
“This is a highly volatile situation that Israeli policies [have] driven.” It is driven by the trauma of October 7, Tsurkov noted. This has led Israel to have a policy anchored more in pre-empting threats. “It is in Israel’s interest to ensure that there is a responsible adult, there is a state that is able to uphold law-and-order across Syria; to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah; to prevent cells that the Iranians are supporting inside Syria from being able to act against Israel.”
“It is also in Israel's interest to diversify the alliances in relationships that the current authorities in Damascus have, to pull Syria toward the Sunni Arab, pro-American camp - which includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia - at the expense of Turkey and Qatar," she said. "Therefore, I think, setting out clear policy objectives in a vision and then pursuing these policies is what Israel needs to be doing in Syria and also other arenas.”
The challenge in Syria and other fronts is to find a strategy. “Israel carried out successful military operations across the region, but then failed to cement those gains in any kind of a political agreement. This is what’s missing.”