It’s not the United States. In recent years, trade between Israel and China has boomed, amounting to $10 billion in 2013 and moving beyond military technology to other, more strictly commercial sectors. Diplomatic relations are also flourishing. The benefits of such developments far outweigh the damage done by the tut-tutting of European governments over Israel’s relations with the Palestinians. Elliott Abrams writes:

It’s fashionable to say that Israel is increasingly isolated in the world, and people point to resolutions like the one in Sweden “recognizing a Palestinian state” that are passing European parliaments. The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, and it would be a serious problem for Israel if the larger economies—Germany, France, the UK—began to cut commercial ties. But that is not happening yet, and these resolutions are either less than meets the eye (the Spanish resolution calls for recognizing a Palestinian state only when it emerges from bilateral negotiations) or in countries of much less economic significance. In any event, a country whose trade with India and China is growing by leaps and bounds is hard to call “isolated.”

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.