Although there were Jews living in the Arabian Peninsula in Mohammad’s time, for most of medieval and modern history the Arab lands surrounding the Persian Gulf—what is now Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Oman—had only small Jewish communities. Nimrod Raphaeli tells their stories:

Unlike the large Jewish communities in Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, and North Africa, the number of Jews in the Gulf countries never exceeded a few hundred in any one country. . . . Most of the Jews who settled in the Gulf countries, primarily in Kuwait and Bahrain, were of Iraqi origin, and many of them were seeking either to escape military conscription under the Ottoman empire or exploring economic opportunities. Of these Jews, only a few have remained, likely only in Bahrain where the Jewish population numbers around 70. A member of that community, Huda Nonoo, was her country’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2008 to 2013—making her the first ambassador of the Jewish faith to represent an Arab country.

Jews held important positions in Ahsaa (currently in eastern Saudi Arabia), notably the post of treasurer of the Ottoman empire, which ruled the area through World War I. The post was held by three successive Jews. . . . During their tenure, many of the entries in the financial books were in “Hebrew” (most likely in Arabic written phonetically in Rashi script, which was commonly used by old-generation Iraqi Jews).

Jews had been living in Muscat since at least 1625. In 1673, according to one traveler, a synagogue was being built, implying permanence. The British officer James Wellsted also noted the existence of a Jewish community when he visited in the 1830s.

Between Sunday and Tuesday, the Israeli air force and navy carried out operation “Bashan Arrow”—after the biblical name for the Golan Heights—which involved 350 strikes on Syrian military assets, disabling, according to the the IDF, between 70 and 80 percent of Syria’s “strategic” weaponry. The operation destroyed Scud missiles, weapons factories, anti-aircraft batteries, chemical weapons, and most of the Syrian navy.

Important as these steps are, Jerusalem will also have to devise a longer-term approach to dealing with Syria. Ehud Yaari has some suggestions, and also notes one of the most important consequences for Israel of Bashar al-Assad’s demise:

One of the most important commentators in Tehran, Suheil Karimi, has warned on Iranian television that “without Assad, ultimately there will be no Hizballah.” Weakened, confused, and decapitated, Hizballah is bound to lose much of its political clout inside Lebanon.

Yaari believes that the next steps in Syria should revolve around making and maintaining alliances, while staying on guard:

Military deployments along the Golan Heights border with Syria have taken place, but should not reach a point where they are seen on the other side of the border as a menace. There is no reason to fear the rebel factions in the adjacent Dara’a and Quneitra provinces [along the Israeli border]. Many of their commanders were assisted by Israel for years before they had to accept a deal with Assad in 2018. Some of those commanders regularly met Israeli officers in Tiberias and in other places. Many villages in this region have benefited in the past decade from Israel’s Good Neighborhood operation, which provided humanitarian aid on a large scale. . . .

Turkey has managed to have the upper hand in its competition with Iran over influence in Syria. Rapprochement with [the Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan would be complicated yet not impossible.