For months now, a vicious civil war has engulfed Syria on Israel’s northeastern border—leaving countless Syrian civilian casualties in its wake. What is not widely understood is that this bloody conflict is essentially a war-by-proxy between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.
Iran has a reliable ally in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—a member of Syria’s “Alawite” Shia minority. Meanwhile, most of the numerous factions and militias fighting to overthrow the Assad regime arise from Syria’s Sunni majority. Some are closely affiliated with Al Qaeda.
The Saudis would like to see Assad replaced by a Sunni majority government in Syria, thereby shifting the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran.
While the Israeli government has officially been neutral in the conflict up to this point, security and defense officials there have been quietly hoping that Assad would remain in power—being the lesser of two evils. Israel believes it has a good understanding of the threats posed by Assad. A chaotic, fragmented Syria run by rival Sunni militias and Al Qaeda warlords would pose a very different set of problems for Israel’s security.
Israel’s preference has been to deal with the devil it knows in Assad. However, a recent opinion piece that appeared in The Times of Israel asserts that Assad, if victorious, may actually come to pose a great threat to Israel in the long run.
The piece was authored by Ely Karmon, a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel. In it, Karmon points out that sectarian conflict has attracted Shia fighters and militia brigades from all over the Middle East.
According to Western intelligence sources, roughly 10,000 foreign Shia fighters are currently operating in support of the Assad regime. Among these are several thousand elite Hezbollah fighters. These also include trained, battle-tested Shia military units from Iraq.
In addition to hardcore Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia fighters, there are several hundred foreign fighters from Shia communities in Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even some from Azerbaijan.
This build up of zealous, militarized Shia fighters in Syria has coincided with a series of escalating attacks and incidents along Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights in recent weeks.
All of this means Israel may face serious security threats from the north no matter which side prevails in Syria’s civil war.
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