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As Israel intensifies military operations against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip and makes loud threats to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the threat posed by it to war-torn Syria continues to grow quietly, away from the spotlight. Following the outbreak of the war in Gaza last October, Israel sent several threats to Syria going as far as vowing to overthrow the government in Damascus if the country gets involved. Israel also stepped up attacks on targets linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliates on Syrian territory. To prevent further escalation between the two sides, the Russian military group in Syria established a network of observation posts on the Golan Heights front in the early months of the conflict. Despite these measures, Israel amassed a large force in its northern region and cleared nearly all the minefields in the Golan front. These movements received little to no attention from the media. Still, they indicated that the threat of a surprise Israeli invasion into southern Syria was unusually high. In response to this apparent threat, a joint Russian-Syrian exercise to practice defending the Arab country’s “territorial integrity” began on June 5. The exercise, which was clearly meant to deter Israel, covered the airspace of Syria, some of its territories, including the southern region, and the eastern section of the Mediterranean Sea. Israeli attacks on Syria decreased after the exercise. However, they didn’t stop. On June 19 a Syrian officer was killed in Israeli drone strikes that targeted a military site near the town of Saidah in the southern governorate of al-Quneitra. The deadly strikes came just two days after an Israeli drone crashed in al-Quneitra. The drone was on a reconnaissance mission when it fell out of the sky, the Israeli military said. Later on June 25, a wave of Israeli artillery strikes hit the town of al-Hmidaiah in al-Quneitra. Following the strikes, the Israeli military dropped leaflets over the governorate warning Syrian troops against illegitimate military presence on the Golan front. A more serious wave of Israeli strikes targeted southern Syria on June 26. An radar site in the southern governorate of al-Suwayda and other sites allegedly linked to Hezbollah in the southern outskirts of Damascus were hit. Two people were killed and a soldier was wounded. Faced with a failure against Hamas in Gaza and fearing a risky war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel could see a chance to score an easy victory in war-torn Syria. The United States could support an invasion of Syria as it falls in line with its plan for a regime change in the country and could distract Russia from its ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. Still, such the invasion is way more risky than what it seems as it could end up turning Syria into the hottest front against Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East.
