The Syrian rebels who toppled Bashar Assad are highly unlikely to pose an immediate threat to Israel, leading Middle East expert Hassan Hassan said on the latest episode of the Haaretz Podcast.
The rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has left Israel concerned about the future of what has been its quietest border in an era of continual instability and war, as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that drove Assad out and has roots in Al-Qaeda and ISIS, takes charge.
“I suspect they will probably send signals to Israel directly or indirectly, that they’re not interested in igniting anything there,” said Syrian-born journalist and author Hassan, editor-in-chief of New Lines Magazine. Hassan said he believes that their posture towards Israel would be “cut from the same cloth” as Assad’s, who “never really waged war against Israel since 1973.”
Haaretz senior military analyst Amos Harel, also on the podcast, said that Israeli officials are wary of the group and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
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According to Harel, the Syrian rebel leader currently “at least pretends to to have become more of a moderate. He doesn’t talk like an extreme jihadist anymore. But don’t think I’m buying into this, and neither are the Israeli intelligence community and the Israeli leadership. The question is whether fighting Israel is a top priority for this new alliance? I don’t think so. But is this a beginning of a wonderful era between Israel and Syria? I seriously doubt that.”
Hassan said that his countrymen are in a “euphoric early stage” of celebration, stunned to see the end of the 50-year reign of the Assad dynasty. “You really have to have a rich imagination to imagine something worse than Assad,” he said. As they watch the images of political prisoners being released after decades, it “reminds them of how bad and brutal the Assad regime was.”
The “domino effect” of upheaval will continue across the region, Hassan predicts. With the devastation of Hamas, Hezbollah, and now the Assad regime, “you could say that the Iranian hegemony in the Levant is almost over.”