Israel vows to complete Syria bombing in “very short time”

Israel will finish its extensive bombing campaign of Syrian military assets within the next few days, the country’s foreign minister has said.

Gideon Sa’ar, who has been in post since early November but is a veteran Israeli political figure, told Newsweek during an interview in Jerusalem that Israel would finish its campaign in Syria in “a very short time.”

Israel will end its strikes on their neighbor from land and sea in a matter of days, said Sa’ar, who serves in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s cabinet as part of the right-wing New Hope party Sa’ar founded in 2020.

Anti-regime rebel factions in Syria launched a surprise wave of operations from the northwest of the country earlier this month after years of low-level fighting, advancing through government-held territory before sweeping into Damascus within a handful of days.

On December 8, longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia and rebel factions, led by Sunni Islamist militant and political group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), seized control of the seat of power in Damascus.

Other armed groups, including Kurdish fighters and Turkish-backed militants, control parts of Syria. The U.S. carried out its own airstrikes on what it described as “known ISIS camps and operatives” in central Syria in December.

Israel started attacks on Syrian military facilities soon after the rebel takeover, saying it was determined to prevent military capabilities, including advanced and chemical weapons, ending up in the hands of extremists.

Separately, a U.S. official said Washington was working hard to make sure chemical weapons were secured. HTS—which is designated a terror group by many Western countries—has said it has no interest in chemical weapons.

Sa’ar said Israel had homed in on a range of targets, including long-range missiles, airplanes and ships in Syria. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has also listed helicopters, drones and radars as among the targets.

“We’ll complete it in a very short time,” the foreign minister said, referring to the extensive airstrikes on Syria. “The majority of what we had to do there is behind us.”

On December 10, the IDF said that within 48 hours, it had “struck most of the strategic weapons stockpiles in Syria.” When approached on Tuesday, the Israeli military pointed to a statement from Thursday in which it said the strikes had destroyed more than 90 percent of Syria’s known strategic surface-to-air missiles, and other assets that include two Syrian air force fighter jet squadrons near Damascus.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that Israel had “destroyed Syria’s navy overnight, and with great success.” Images widely circulated online early last week appeared to show charred remains of missile ships, said to beat at the Syrian port of Latakia.

Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel had damaged the supply of weapons from Syria to Iranian-backed militant and political group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel launched a ground incursion into southern Lebanon against Hezbollah in October in concert with devastating aerial strikes on the country sitting on Israel’s northern border.

British monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said on Monday that Israeli airstrikes had targeted warehouses in Rif Dimashq province, which includes the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The SOHR also said on Monday that Israel had attacked weapons depots in the Tartus region, on Syria’s coast. They were “the most violent Israeli attacks on Syrian territory since 2012,” the group said, reporting that at least 36 civilians were injured in “consecutive explosions.”

Newsweek could not independently verify the reports of IDF strikes on Tartus, and Sa’ar declined to confirm specific details on Israeli strikes in Syria.

The SOHR said Israeli jets had carried out 18 airstrikes focused on Syrian military positions around Tartus. Strikes reportedly also targeted Masyaf, a city to the northeast of Tartus.

Footage on social media posted overnight into Monday appeared to show a dramatic explosion in Tartus, although this could not be independently verified.

Between the fall of the Assad regime on December 8 and December 16, Israel carried out 473 airstrikes on Syria, the monitoring group said. The attacks focused on Syrian military air bases, radar systems, air defense units, weapons and warehouses, added the group, which has long followed the fighting in Syria.

HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who also goes by his better-known name, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the Israeli strikes “crossed red lines,” but added that the new Syrian authorities did not want to engage in conflict.

As the decades-old Assad regime crumbled, Israel also moved military forces into the United Nations buffer zone between its territory and Syria. The demilitarized zone was created under a 1974 ceasefire between the two countries following the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, commonly referred to by Israelis as the Yom Kippur War. Al-Sharaa has said HTS is committed to the 1974 agreement.

Israel seized the Golan Heights, which abut the buffer zone, from Syria in 1967 and later annexed the area, although this is not internationally recognized. The U.S. is the exception, as President-elect Donald Trump acknowledged Israel’s control during his first term in office.

The IDF has also said that its forces had entered “a few additional points” bordering the buffer zone, with officials saying they had detected the possible entry of armed individuals near a U.N. post on the Syrian side of the zone.

Israeli political and military officials have said their presence in the buffer zone, including on the crucial strategic peak of Mount Hermon, is temporary and focused entirely on securing Israel’s borders. Katz, posting to social media on Friday, said the “the Syrian peak of Mount Hermon (…) returned to Israeli control after 51 years,” calling the military presence there an “an exciting historical moment.”

Israel said earlier this week that it would double the population living in the Golan Heights, which was condemned by countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, possibly complicating Israel’s long-running efforts to broker a normalization agreement with Riyadh.

Roughly 20,000 Israelis live in the Golan Heights, with approximately the same number of Syrians who did not leave after Israel seized the region. Many of them are Druze Arabs.

Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, told Newsweek that Syria currently poses a “serious threat” and reiterated al-Sharaa’s and HTS’ links to Al-Qaeda.

HTS and its leader have attempted to shed their association with Al-Qaeda and jihadism. The European Union‘s Foreign Policy Chief, Kaja Kallas, said that Syria faces “an optimistic, positive, but rather uncertain future,” and that “it is not only the words, but we want to see the deeds going in the right direction.”

Western diplomats have met HTS representatives in Damascus, and al-Sharaa has called for Western sanctions leveled against Syria during the fallen Assad regime to be lifted. The rebel leader told British newspaper The Times that the new officials “do not want any conflict, whether with Israel or anyone else, and we will not let Syria be used as a launchpad for attacks.”

“I’m not impressed at all from [the] very beautiful interviews that they’re giving and things that they’re saying, because we know it up close,” Haskel said. “I know who they are, and we’re following it up closely.”