Giorgio Cafiero
The New Arab, Dec. 14, 2023
“The war in Gaza is reviving the relevance of the resistance front in the Arab world. Not only the Syrian opposition, but the Arab world more generally has scoffed at the impotence of the resistance front in recent years. Today, Arabs are again rooting for resistance. The Abraham Accords and American diplomacy look too anti-Arab and too pro-Israel.”
The government led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has high stakes in Israel’s ten-week-old war on Gaza, which has already spilled into Syria.
Israel has bombed the Damascus and Aleppo airports, as well as outposts in Syria’s rural areas under the pretext of deterring Iran and regional militias backed by Tehran from using Syrian territory and infrastructure to potentially attack Israel amid further escalation.
Ultimately, the conflict in Gaza advances, but could also set back, Damascus’s interests at a time when Assad’s regime is trying to recover from more than a decade of brutal warfare inside Syria. Damascus must carefully navigate the fallout from Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza.
Assad’s opportunities
The Assad regime committed serious war crimes and other abuses in its efforts to maintain power since the 2011 Arab Spring.
Just last month a French court issued an international arrest warrant for Assad and others in the Syrian government and military for alleged use of chemical weapons. Yet Damascus is trying to capitalise on the outrage across the Islamic world and much of the Global South by Israel’s bloody military campaign in Gaza and the seemingly unconditional support it has received from the United States.
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