THE dramatic fall of dynastic Baath Party regime in Syria has shifted the world’s focus from Israel’s unabated genocide of unarmed helpless Palestinians in Gaza and occupied West Bank, to the ‘liberated’ Syria. Emboldened by the situation, Israel is busy in carrying out its relentless genocidal operations in Gaza, occupying more territories.

The Israeli air force carried out almost 500 bombing sorties in a week over Syria, although the latter’s air force, army and navy have been non-operational. Can these proclaimed successes win Israel the security and peace it apparently wants and the objective it has been trying to achieve for the last seven decades?

There have been talks about the so-called ‘greater Israel’ plan, and ideas about dividing Syria into two parts by creating buffer zones in areas where American forces are already positioned. This situation prompted one observer to claim that the Syrians are left only with small arms, such as assault rifles and machine guns.

It means there is nothing left to threaten Israel. Such self-proclaimed experts are forgetting one stark reality; the will of the people. Military academies all over the world are still discussing the fatal mistakes in the construction of the Bar Lev Line.

This defence line was designed and constructed by Israel’s Gen Haim Bar Lev, who arrogantly declared it an ‘invincible’ wall which no army could cross. But the Yom Kippur war in 1973 shattered that myth. It was the help extended by the United States that could save Israel from being completely overrun by Gen Saad el-Shazly of Egypt.

Also, it is not in the distant past that Afghan mujahideen defeated not one, but two global superpowers. The people in Syria have expressed in clear words that they want to keep their homeland united, and world history is replete with events in which the will of the people prevailed over just about everything else.

Abid Mahmud Ansari
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2025