From Mount Hermon's Peaks, Netanyahu Plots His Vision of a Greater Israel - Israel News - Haaretz.com
The events of the past few days in Syria remind me of my childhood friend whose father, a brigadier general in the reserves, held the emergency post of governor of Damascus. Of course, his father never served in that position; Israeli tanks never ventured as far as the Syrian capital.
But today, Israeli forces are getting closer to the goal of Israel's old war games on the northern front: stabilizing a line on the outskirts of Damascus.
The capital is still far from the rifle barrels of the Israel Defense Forces, which has taken over the demilitarized zone that was agreed on after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The IDF has announced that it hasn't moved forward out of the zone.
Benjamin Netanyahu on the Syrian border this week. He's canceling the political agreements for the region.Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO
Israel has portrayed its takeover of the DMZ without resistance as a defensive measure, the creation of a security perimeter after the Syrian army abandoned its posts on the border.
The IDF celebrated the operation with photos of the Israeli flag atop Mount Hermon, and tanks in the town of Quneitra, but it obscured the fact that this was on Syrian land, not a no-man's-land. Israel has told the international community that the operation was limited; the army took over just a few positions that overlook the Syrians.
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The ground operation was accompanied by strikes by Israel's air force and navy that destroyed their Syrian counterparts as well as the country's missile defense system and certain research facilities. These moves are being celebrated as Israel's greatest successes since the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israelis looking toward Quneitra, Syria, this week. Israeli expansion is very popular on the right.Credit: Shir Torem/Reuters
Now that the blitzkrieg is over, questions are arising about the future. How long will Israel control the "expanded" Golan Heights? What will happen if the chaos in Syria worsens, with part of the disintegration going against Israel? Will the IDF stay put or advance further toward Damascus and Daraa in the far south as it expands the new security zone?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave himself credit for the sudden downfall of the Assad regime, which once seemed like a force of nature in the region. In Netanyahu's view, Israel's great achievement in the war against Iran and its allies in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon led to the revolution in Syria.
But Netanyahu went another step, effectively canceling political agreements for the region. On Sunday, he toured the Golan Heights and declared that the "Separation of Forces Agreement has collapsed."
In doing so, he ended an arrangement that was signed at the end of the Yom Kippur War and had been scrupulously honored for 50 years, giving Israel stability and quiet on the Syrian border. If the agreement has collapsed, Israel is no longer bound by the map that accompanies it; it can change the border according to its security needs.
Netanyahu at the Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday. He says an earthquake has taken place like the Sykes-Picot Agreement.Credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90
But Netanyahu isn't satisfied with erasing the borderlines and the security agreement for the Golan. In his testimony at his corruption trial Tuesday, he went further, saying that "something tectonic has happened here, an earthquake that hasn't happened in the 100 years since the Sykes-Picot Agreement."
The mention of the 1916 agreement between colonial powers Britain and France, which divided up the Ottoman Empire and created the states that exist to this day, wasn't intended to teach a history lesson to the judges at the Tel Aviv District Court. Netanyahu is implying that the border agreements based on Sykes-Picot are dead and buried.
For most of his years in power, Netanyahu was considered risk-averse, someone who avoided wars and embraced the status quo. The current war has changed him.
"Netanyahu, for his part, has found that a maximalist military approach yields spectacular strategic dividends along with domestic political benefits," Suzanne Maloney, vice president of the Brookings Institution and director of its foreign policy program, wrote this week in Foreign Affairs.
An Israeli soldier praying on the Israel-Syria border this week. According to the Israeli logic, the agreement has collapsed, so border adjustments are possible.Credit: Ammar Awad/Reuters
After overcoming the shock of Hamas' invasion of October 7, 2023, and the IDF's poor performance that day, Netanyahu fled responsibility for the disaster and shrugged off his fears.
He has gradually been more open to operations that were once considered risky if not suicidal: the destruction and occupation of Gaza, the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, a body blow to Hezbollah, an invasion of south Lebanon and the destruction of Shi'ite villages, the bombing of Iran and Yemen, the expulsion of Palestinians from the Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills in the West Bank, as well as air raids on Jenin and Tul Karm.
Canceling the 2005 Gaza pullout and resettling the enclave enjoy broad support in the governing coalition, even if for now Netanyahu is keeping his distance from the idea.
The prime minister seems to be angling for a legacy as the leader who expanded Israel's borders after 50 years of retreat. There is enthusiastic support on the right for the idea that the appropriate punishment for Israel's enemies is a loss of territory. Netanyahu has a key partner in Donald Trump. According to Maloney, "The new administration will surely take a permissive approach to Israeli territorial ambitions."
Netanyahu wants to be remembered as the one who created Greater Israel, not just as a political schemer accused of corruption who abandoned 100 hostages in Gaza. That's why he'll try to cement Israeli control in northern Gaza. That's why he won't rush to withdraw from the newly occupied territory in the Golan. Under certain circumstances, he might even expand it.