While Israeli jets reportedly struck Iranian targets in Syria on Monday, its border with Syria has remained relatively quiet, especially when compared with the escalating situation along the Lebanese border. But it has not been completely quiet: there has been sporadic rocket fire from Palestinian groups operating in Syria (presumably with Damascus’s blessing), as well as attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed militias in the country, since October 7.
Carmit Valensi and Tal Avraham explain why the Syrian ruler, Bashar al-Assad, wants to stay out of the current conflict, and why he might not be able to. They also take a look at the regime’s rhetoric and, so far as it can be assessed, popular opinion:
The official discourse in Syria . . . focuses on support for Hamas’s surprise attack and the Palestinian people, while highlighting Israeli “aggression” toward the Palestinians. At the same time, opponents of the regime have criticized the limited regional and international attention to the Syrian people during the civil war, compared to the attention showered on the Palestinians, including global mass demonstrations for the Palestinian cause. There has also been criticism of the international calls for a ceasefire and for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, while such calls were noticeably weaker in the case of the Syrian civil war.
Some opponents of the regime [accurately] view Hamas as part of the “axis of resistance” that includes Iran, Hizballah, and Syria, express support for Israel, and call for the elimination of Hamas—with the hope that this would weaken the axis. When, at a joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on November 11, Assad accused Israel of war crimes and condemned the West for its response to the war in Gaza, many people on social media noted the irony of his comments, given the atrocities that Assad himself committed against the Palestinians in his country—as well as the rest of his citizens—during the Syrian civil war.
In other words, it hasn’t been lost on Syrians that for more than a decade, Assad, with help from Russia and Iran, has done to his own people what Western media and activists falsely accuse Israel of doing to Palestinians: indiscriminate bombing of civilians, acts of calculated cruelty, attempts to cleanse areas of particular religious and ethnic groups, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and mass incarceration in what might best be described as concentration camps.
Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/assad-war/