Senior Israeli officials are warning that the new Syrian government cannot be trusted and is likely to turn against Israel in the future.

Israeli officials are also concerned by the embrace of the outgoing Biden administration toward Syrian rebel leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani. The Biden administration has removed the $10 million bounty on Al-Sharaa’s head for his al-Qaeda past jihadist activities and is holding direct talks with the rebels.

But Israeli security officials believe that Al-Shaara is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last week, two senior military intelligence officers said that Al-Sharaa’s dialogue with the West is a show and that he views Israel as an enemy. The officers asserted that ultimately, sooner or later, the new Syrian regime will be hostile to Israel.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also spoke at the meeting, saying that the “new Syrian government is a carbon copy of the government in Idlib. It doesn’t include all sectors in Syria and it includes extremist Islamists.”[Before the fall of the Assad regime, the rebels ruled over Idlib in northwest Syria.]

“They’re selling themselves to the West as moderate,” Sa’ar stressed. “Western countries have a vested interest in accepting their whitewashing because they want to send back the Syrian refugees in their countries.”

Sa’ar warned that Israel must remain wary and continue to maintain IDF troops in the areas it captured.

Sa’ar also expressed his concerns at a meeting at the Foreign Ministry, cautioning that the new Syrian government poses risks to Israel that should be keeping senior defense officials awake at night.

“Around the world, they speak of ‘organized regime change in Syria,’ but it’s not like a new government was elected in a democratic fashion and it governs all of Syria,” Sa’ar said. “This is a gang of terrorists who first seized Idlib and then took over the capital city of Damascus and other areas.”

“The international community is eager to view them as a new, stable regime because many countries want to return the refugees they’re currently hosting to Syria. But that’s not the reality. There are ongoing conflicts with the Alawites along the coast, explicit threats by [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan to eliminate Kurdish autonomy, and harassment of the Christian community in Syria.”

He emphasized that Syria’s new government “is an Islamist regime aiming to achieve unified control over all of Syria.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)