Israeli leaders recently made clear that the IDF’s current military deployment into south-west Syria is not intended as a stop-gap measure until its northern neighbour stabilises. Rather, in a speech last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told IDF officer cadets that the force’s troops would stay on the formerly Syrian side of Mount Hermon, and in the buffer zone carved out to the east of the Golan Heights for ‘an unlimited period of time’.
Israel’s incursion into Syria to disrupt a perceived threat resembles other foreign entries into Syria,
In a statement appearing to hint at a yet more ambitious Israeli strategy, the Prime Minister added that Israel demanded the ‘full demilitarisation of southern Syria from troops of the new Syrian regime in the Quneitra, Daraa and Suweyda provinces’. In the same week, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said:
We will not allow the extreme Islamic regime in Syria to harm the Druze.
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