Understanding Israel and Trump’s conflicting agendas in Syria

A common cliche used by American politicians when describing the relationship between the United States and Israel is that “there is no daylight between the two” on policy. 

That aphorism has generally held, especially when it comes to Israel’s apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. It is shakier when it comes to the broader region. On Syria, for example, there is considerable daylight between the policy of the United States and that of Israel.

In fact, Israeli actions have stood against not only stated U.S. policy, but against the goals that the administration of Donald Trump has clearly been pursuing. Administration officials have expressed frustration and anger at Israel over this, but that feeling has not reached the president, at least based on his public silence on the matter.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reverted to an old practice: pushing the envelope against the United States until he sees that the White House is really serious and might act. We saw that with Iran, as Israel tried to reignite the fighting after Trump had settled on a ceasefire, only to call back their bombers when Trump publicly ordered them to do so.

In Syria, the admonishment was less public, but equally clear. Trump had called on Israel to stop bombing Syria, but had done so in comparatively gentle terms, and Israel only escalated its aggression. On July 18, however, the U.S. sent Israel a more serious message, and they relented, halting their campaign against the fledgling Syrian government. 

More of that sort of behavior will be necessary if Trump wants to achieve his ambitions in Syria. What are the goals of Israel and the U.S., how might their divergent agendas be resolved, and what does this mean for the people of Syria?

Israeli objectives

Israel claims its occupation of additional land in Syria after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad was based on security concerns. It further claims that its recent attacks on Syria, including bombing the defense ministry and another bombing very close to the presidential palace in Damascus, were carried out to protect the Druze population in Suweida and other parts of Syria.

The security concerns can be dismissed out of hand. Israel has destroyed most of the Syrian state’s armaments. The government and the scattered militias are far too weak to offer even a meager threat to Israel. This was a land grab, intended as a long-term occupation with the goal of enhancing Israel’s ability to detect and intercept threats from the east.

The issue of the Druze is no less cynical, but a bit more complicated. Israel’s purported humanitarian concern for the well-being of Syria’s Druze community can similarly be dismissed out of hand, given the utter disregard and even antipathy it routinely shows for all lives outside of its own Jewish population. 

But Israel has some domestic political concerns when it comes to the Druze. 

The Druze community in Israel is sharply divided along both generational and geographical lines. Many older Druze from within the original, pre-1967 borders of Israel have accepted Israeli citizenship and served in the Israeli army. Over the last few decades, their voting pattern has shifted from what was the mainstream Labor Party in the 1990s to a wider dispersal of votes, including both right-wing and left-wing parties. This makes them a target for election campaigns, where a handful of votes can swing seats in the Knesset.  

But Druze voter turnout, which was once near 80% has dropped below 60%. This reflects a trend of disillusionment that is most profound among the younger generations of Israeli Druze. 

Druze in the occupied Golan Heights are an entirely different matter. Most of them have not accepted Israeli citizenship at all. While there has been a recent uptick in the number of Golan Druze who have applied for Israeli citizenship, that has only brought the total up to about 20% of the Druze population of the Golan Heights. 

Yet that upward trend of citizenship incentivizes Israeli leadership to appeal to the Druze community even more. Thus, it’s not entirely untrue when Benjamin Netanyahu claims that he is defending the Druze in Suweida, where many relatives of Israeli Druze live.

But it’s a small part of the story. What Israel wants in Syria, more than anything else, is to establish its regional hegemony. It wants to continue its practice of acting with impunity inside Syria, bombing as it decides to, and occupying the lands it wants. To this end, it has declared a large part of southwestern Syria a forbidden zone for Syria’s military. 

Thus, even after the United States ordered Israel to relent, Netanyahu had no problem with Israel “permitting” Syrian forces to re-enter Suweida a few days later as fighting threatened to renew. For Israel, this provided even greater proof of its authority over the region.

Israel also very much wants to keep Syria from unifying under one banner, and this is the nub of its disagreement with Washington, which is trying to back Ahmed al-Sharaa in uniting the country.

Obstacles in Syria

Plenty of people question al-Sharaa’s dedication to protecting minorities in Syria, and that is not baseless skepticism. His past association with highly sectarian, violent groups—including ISIL and al-Qaeda, from which his own group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) stems—warrants concern. 

Al-Sharra has repeatedly promised to protect minority Christians, Druze, Alawites, Turkmen, Kurds, Yazidis, Circassians, Shi’a, and other people who make up the diverse ethnic character of Syria. Thus far, he has not shown himself fully capable of doing so, but it’s not clear whether that is from lack of trying or due to the difficulties faced by a new government that inherited massive, historical and contemporary sectarian strife in the wake of war and many of whose own people are, undoubtedly, part of the problem.

Many Israeli leaders oppose any détente with al-Sharaa. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Monday, “We need to do one more thing: Eliminate al-Julani (al-Sharaa’s nom de guerre). Get rid of him. He’s a jihadist. Why are we letting him live?…I think Israel needs to understand: Once a jihadist, always a jihadist.”

But it’s not just Ben-Gvir. The ostensibly more moderate Benny Gantz, far from disagreeing with Ben-Gvir, stated that, “It’s the responsibility of al-Sharaa to make sure that Syria is not being pushed into the ongoing jihadist approach. If that would be the direction, then any option should be on the table.” 

While Israel’s official policy on Syria has remained ambiguous, its actions tell the story. There is clearly distaste for al-Sharaa, but they recognize that he has gone out of his way to avoid confrontation with Israel while working hard to curry favor with Trump. Even al-Sharaa’s objections to Israel’s attacks and occupations have largely been incredibly mild, given the enormity of Israel’s provocations. Bombing key government sites in the capital, Damascus, finally elicited a stronger criticism, but even there, al-Sharaa was careful in his words.

In the long term, Israel wants a Syria that it can dominate, potentially even a country that is fragmented into sections, much like neoconservatives once envisioned for Iraq. 

Most Syrians want to see a united country that rebuilds its national pride and its economy. Many believe al-Sharaa shares that goal, a vision that includes all the minority communities of Syria. Yet, even among that silent majority of Syrians, there are doubts as to whether al-Sharaa is capable or particularly committed to that goal. Others, on all sides, remain embittered over the years of fighting on the heels of decades of the Assads’ pitting of groups against each other while tamping down open conflict with an iron fist.

As the scholar Rami G. Khouri points out, all of this is typical of the post-colonial nature of Arab states, where people aspire to a better future, but are denied—usually by outside forces supporting domestic dictatorships or stirring up confrontations—the opportunity to decide what that future should look like and work toward creating it.

This is what the U.S. and Israel are both exploiting, albeit to different ends.

Where do the U.S. and Israel go from here?

Matters will only get more complicated for the United States from here. While Israel’s strategy is simply fomenting chaos, if the U.S. wants to see a friendly government unite Syria—which is what al-Sharaa is telling Washington he will do—they’re going to have to prevent Israeli interference. 

Al-Sharaa has appealed to his Turkish benefactors to request their help in securing Syria. While Türkiye does not enjoy the close relationship with Donald Trump that Israel does, its own leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is another authoritarian who speaks Trump’s language.

Erdogan also has the benefit of having Saudi Arabia on his side in this matter. The Saudis just announced $6.4 billion of investments in Syrian infrastructure, real estate, telecommunications, and other basic components needed to rebuild the state. That is sure to weigh on Trump’s thinking.

One problem, however, is the inexperience and lack of understanding of the region that is not only fundamental to the president but is endemic throughout his administration. Trump’s top and mid-level advisory staff are selected based on their loyalty to him and their perceived business acumen, not on their expertise in the region. 

Moreover, Congress has a role to play here. Some of the key sanctions on Syria in terms of its long-term economic recovery are congressional and cannot be eliminated by Trump alone. Pending legislation allows Trump to waive those sanctions, effectively ending them, but support and opposition for this legislation are coming from both sides of the aisle. 

There also seems to be a deep lack of appreciation for the complexity of this task. For example, the idea of Syrian Druze seeking autonomy, possibly in a federated Syria or through some other arrangement, is far from new. It traces its political history back a century and is rooted both in the Druze community’s history of leading revolts against colonial powers and in the persecution it has faced for centuries in the entire region. 

Other Syrian and foreign rulers have tried to bring the Druze “in line” through force, with predictably dire consequences for both the Druze and their neighbors. There are also serious grievances left over from the Assad regime, and these are exacerbated by the penetration of Syria by outside militias, including ISIL (which is slowly growing in strength in the security vacuum of Syria today), some of whom also exploited sectarian rifts among Syrians to recruit new members from aggrieved local populations.

These are complicated circumstances, which require patience and healing, as well as a concerted effort to prevent violence. 

Instead of helping that process along, the Trump administration has pushed for a quick transition in Syria, but refused to stop most of Israel’s attacks. This has resulted in an overemphasis on the use of force while simultaneously making it more difficult for the central government to discipline its own forces, many of whom come from the same sectarian and violent forces that are in al-Sharaa’s own background. 

Human rights organizations have been very clear that atrocities have been committed by many groups. But when the security forces commit the atrocities and war crimes, as is often the case, this undermines any possibility of bringing some order to this chaos. 

It is possible that Türkiye can help with the security, but for most Syrian minorities (and many Sunni Arabs as well), Turkish troops will instill more nervousness than confidence. 

The best thing the United States can do is keep Israel on a leash, stop it from bombing Syria, and force it at least back to the part of the Golan it has been occupying illegally for decades. The prospects of such a stern stance are not great, but if Trump wants his new partner in Syria to prosper, he’ll need to do it.