July 23, 2025, 9:54 AM View Comments ()

The fighting in the Syrian city of Sweida appears to have finally come to an end this week after the last of several declared cease-fires took hold. The Druze and Bedouin militias that fought each other at the cost of some 1,200 lives agreed to lay down their arms and exchange prisoners. Syrian security forces were taking control of the area as President Ahmed al-Sharaa pledged to protect Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities and prosecute those driving the violence. Israel, which said it had stepped in to defend the Druze, had already ended its bombing campaign a few days earlier and as of Monday was delivering medical supplies to Sweida.

However, no one seriously expects this will be the last outburst of sectarian violence in Syria. Militants inside and outside the government are opposed to the president’s efforts to create a religiously tolerant society aligned with the West. The Sharaa government’s grip on the country is tenuous, and much of Syria remains in the hands of local militias distrustful of the new rulers. All that presents a dilemma for Israel as it navigates a new Middle East balance of power that, in theory at least, gives it the ability to act where it sees fit. Syria is ripe for Israeli intervention again.

Throughout nearly 14 years of civil war in Syria, Israel stood aloof, limiting its military activity to striking Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and providing some low-key assistance to the Druze and Kurdish minorities. That suddenly changed last December, when Sharaa’s forces toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Israel seized the demilitarized zone along the Syrian border and the strategic summit of Mount Hebron, while its air force attacked Syrian army installations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared southern Syria (the area adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and where most of Syria’s Druze live) a no-go zone, not only to militias but to the Syrian army. But it wasn’t just the regime change in Damascus that altered Israel’s approach to Syria.

Decades ago, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol characterized Israel’s perception of itself politically and militarily in the Middle East as Shimshon der nebechdiker, Yiddish for Samson the weakling (in contrast to his image in the Bible’s Book of Judges, where Samson is renowned for his physical strength). On the one hand, Israel has been militarily more powerful than any of its enemies since the 1960s; on the other hand, it feels that its very existence is constantly under threat. Since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, the Israeli Samson is more muscle-bound than ever but no less fearful.

The weakling side has been magnified by the trauma of Oct. 7. Having downplayed the Hamas threat in the years before, treating it as a problem that could be contained through good intelligence, border fences, and occasional military operations, Israel now sees all the areas adjacent to its borders as potential staging points for another Oct. 7. It is for this reason that many in Israel insist that the war in Gaza continue until Hamas is “eliminated,” as Netanyahu likes to say. In Lebanon, it explains why the army continues to occupy five strategic sites in the country and regularly attacks Hezbollah assets, despite the cease-fire agreement signed last November. Israel’s Syria policy is informed by the same concerns. Israeli officials such as Foreign Minister Gideon Saar have described Sharaa and his government as jihadis “in suits,” ready to strike at Israel the first chance they get. And, even if his outreach to the West is genuine, Sharaa is nowhere close to establishing control over the country, as the chaos in Sweida demonstrated.

The Samson side relates to almost everything that has happened since Oct. 7. The paranoia about a Hamas redux notwithstanding, the organization has been effectively defeated. (The war is being sustained these days to please the Israeli government’s far-right coalition partners, who dream of resettling Gaza.) Hezbollah has similarly been defeated—its top leadership killed and its missile arsenal significantly degraded. It has put up no resistance to repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory. Although the achievements of the war with Iran remain subject to debate, there is little doubt that Israel knocked out the country’s air defenses, eliminated much of its military leadership, and, to one degree or another, set back Iran’s nuclear program with U.S. help. Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance has either collapsed or been rendered useless.

The result is that many in Israel now see the country as the regional strongman, tasked with maintaining order and stability, at least where Israeli interests are directly at stake.

In Syria last week, this dichotomy of weakness and strength was at play. The weakness was expressed in Israeli anxiety over militias establishing themselves in southern Syria as they battled Druze fighters and over the Syrian army deploying there ostensibly to restore order. Indeed, Israel didn’t attack Bedouin fighters but the Syrian army when it dared to enter Israel’s self-declared buffer zone. Israel’s self-perception of strength was expressed no less by its decision to enter the fighting knowing that the Syrian army would be unable to fight back. Israel’s decision to bomb the entrance to the Syrian Defense Ministry in the heart of Damascus was an act of hubris, a demonstration of power.

A third facet to Israeli policy was also at play: domestic politics. The Netanyahu government comprises far-right (and until last week, when they quit, religious) parties that have little interest in the country’s non-Jewish minorities or are downright hostile to them. Yet the government’s decision to come to the aid of Syria’s Druze was framed as a humanitarian act and gesture to Israel’s own Druze community.

Needless to say, the Druze under Israeli rule, which includes about 150,000 citizens living in Israel proper and another 25,000 in the Golan Heights (most of whom are not citizens), were anxious about the fate of their brethren in Syria after the fighting broke out July 13. Their spiritual leader, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, spoke with Netanyahu about it while hundreds of Israeli Druze overwhelmed the small security presence on the border to stream into Syria in a show of solidarity.

If the Druze were any other Arab minority, it is likely the government would have ignored their pleas or, worse, arrested or shot at those crossing into enemy territory. The reason it didn’t is that, unlike other Israeli Arabs, Druze serve in the Israeli military; many have become career officers, and some have lost their lives fighting in Gaza. They are regarded as loyal citizens. Their status is such that last Thursday, even Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi called on Israel and the world to help the Syrian Druze. “We are witnessing a brutal campaign of murder against the Druze people, an assault on the image [of God] in humanity,” he wrote in an open letter.

Even if Netanyahu wasn’t inclined to act out of purely humanitarian concerns, electoral calculations might have been enough. In contrast to Muslim and Christian Arab voters, on election day the great majority of Druze shun the Arab-led parties. Though Netanyahu’s Likud party typically captures only a small share of the Druze vote, the next election is likely to be closely contested. A few thousand ballots might be critical.

The Druze were offended by two pieces of legislation passed under the aegis of a previous Netanyahu government: the 2018 Nation-State Law (which prioritizes the rights of Jews in Israel) and the 2017 Kaminitz Law (which eases the way for the authorities to raze illegal buildings, a practice used more often against Arabs than Jews). Even before the fighting broke out in Syria, the government had been seeking to assuage the Druze with compensatory legislation. Coming to the aid of their Syrian brethren was another way of accomplishing this and especially convenient if it aligns with the government’s wider Syria strategy.

The catch is that as powerful as Israel feels now, its ability to play the strongman role is severely constrained.

The first constraint is U.S. President Donald Trump. The president’s stance on the key concerns shared by the United States and Israel is often hard to ascertain, but the theme that keeps surfacing between his often contradictory words and actions is that he wants to steer clear of military entanglements in the Middle East. Left to his druthers, he would rather do business deals with the Saudis and hope against hope that by lifting sanctions, Syria can become another customer for U.S. companies. If Trump orders military action, whether to take on the Houthis or Iran, he prefers short and sweet campaigns that end with decisive results (at least in his own mind).

Trump’s vision may not stand the test of the Middle East’s dismal reality, but for now Netanyahu has to deal with it. The aggressive stance Israel has adopted since Oct. 7 has led to friction with Washington over Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza—and now over Syria. The United States has been mediating quiet talks between Israel and Syria, amid hints about the eventual establishment of bilateral relations. Washington made clear it didn’t support the Israeli bombing campaign last week and worked to arrange the cease-fire. On Sunday, Axios quoted an unnamed White House official putting the divergence in simple and stark terms: “Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time. … This could undermine what Trump is trying to do.”

The second constraint is domestic. Yes, Israel’s use of intelligence and technology to defeat its enemies has been impressive. But it cannot claim to be a major power when it comes to its economy, population size, or even the raw capacity of its military hardware. These limits can be seen in the 21 months of fighting since Oct. 7, which has strained the country’s abilities. Without vast U.S. supplies of arms and the willingness of military reservists to serve in some cases hundreds of days, the war would not have been possible. Israel cannot depend on Trump to supply the same aid that his predecessor Joe Biden did. Last year, Israel led the world in military spending as a percentage of GDP (8.8 percent) after Ukraine, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. If plans to boost this year’s budget are approved (to cover the cost of renewed combat in Gaza and the war with Iran), defense spending will reach 7 percent of GDP, likely topping the world rankings again. These are not sustainable numbers.

Supporters of Israel’s aggressive strategy may argue that assertiveness will save Israel from fighting costly wars in the future by nipping threats in the bud. But whether it is Syria, Lebanon, or Iran, the aggressiveness is just as likely to entangle it in wars it cannot afford to fight.