Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated long-standing demands that the entire south of Syria south of Damascus remain absolutely demilitarized, and vowed that Israel will continue to carry out attacks on Syria to enforce that as one of his “red lines.”
Netanyahu also presented a second red line of “protecting the brothers of our brothers, the Druze in the Druze mountains.” Though Israel has been attacking Syria and carrying out a ground invasion since December, the Druze have only occasionally been a talking point as a pretext for those operations.
This is one of those occasions though, as fighting in the Suwayda Governorate has left over 500 people dead this week, and Israel continues to attack that area intermittently. Netanyahu even bragged that Wednesday’s ceasefire, which doesn’t seem to be particularly effective, was only achieved through Israeli force of arms.
Israeli Druze cross the border to check on their family members in Syria, amid the ongoing conflict in the Druze areas in Syria, in Majdal Shams, near the ceasefire line between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, July 16, 2025. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The Israeli Druze are generally supportive of Israel using its military to protect the much larger Syrian Druze population, but many analysts warn that the strikes are more just a Netanyahu military goal and that the Druze, when they’re mentioned at all, are just another talking point in support of that.
Israel invaded Syria in December, after the ouster of the Assad government. They have engaged in talks with the new Islamist government, but the invasion and the attacks never really stopped. Lately, the Syrian government has reiterated its right to self defense and been more publicly critical of Israeli attacks.
The US insisted it did not support the recent Israeli attacks on Syria, indicative of the Trump Administration’s increasingly favorably view of Islamist leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. The US criticizing Israeli attacks on their neighbors is highly unusual, and indeed the US has previously expressed support for the Israeli invasion, though the administration now seems to have grown weary of the ever growing and increasingly aimless operation, which is undermining normalization talks the US supports.
