Israel strikes Syria

CGTN Europe

Israeli troops move into Syria, as the Syrian military forces desert their posts following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government. CGTN’s Jonathan Regev reports from Tel Aviv.

Transcript

00:00Always a concern, Paul, simply because I think the situation in Syria for Israel and for everyone else is unknown.

00:07Do we really know what Syria will look like? Do we really know who is going to govern there?

00:12The answer is no, and therefore anything is possible.

00:15Israel decided not to wait for anything coming in Syria and take some preemptive measures, being proactive.

00:22We're seeing it in the buffer zone. The buffer zone is on the border between the two countries

00:29and Israeli forces are operating in the buffer zone, but they're not crossing into Syria.

00:34The buffer zone was established some 50 years ago after the Yom Kippur War.

00:40It was established in May of 1974, and this is an area on which both armies,

00:46the Israeli army and the Syrian army, cannot operate there, only UN peacekeepers.

00:51But Israel is now saying that this agreement, the separation of powers, as it is known,

00:57is no longer in force simply because the Syrian army is no longer there,

01:01and you don't really know who is the one calling the shots in Syria.

01:05Therefore Israel decided that it will act in the buffer zone but not cross into Syria.

01:11And yes, we know how these things begin. We never know how they end.

01:16Does Israel know exactly who is going to be the next door neighbor?

01:19The answer is no. There are some indirect negotiations through the Druze community in Israel and in Syria,

01:26through other intelligence forces in the area, but there's a lot of uncertainty,

01:32and uncertainty is something that Israel wants to be prepared for because you never know what may happen tomorrow.

01:37Indeed, a huge amount of uncertainty and a picture really shifting in the region.

01:42What else is Israel saying about its strategy in Syria?

01:48The strategy is not to wait for things in Syria, not to allow the other side to dictate the events,

01:55but to be proactive. Israel learned a very difficult lesson from the way that it acted in Gaza and in Lebanon,

02:04always reacting to what Hamas did, to what Hezbollah did, instead of taking actions by itself.

02:10This time around Israel is acting before anything is happening.

02:14That is why, as we mentioned, the forces are acting in the buffer zone.

02:18That is why Israel did not wait a very long time, and as soon as it was clear that the Assad regime was collapsing,

02:26Israel took the very strategic Syrian summit over Mount Hermon, a high point overlooking the entire region,

02:34and Israel is being prepared for anything that might happen.

02:37A lot of forces have been deployed to the northeastern border on the Golan Heights with Syria.

02:43Israel, after the lessons learned in Lebanon and in Gaza, understands that it has to take actions first,

02:48be proactive, and not wait for something to happen on the other side before acting itself.

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