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Let's take this now though to Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, who joins us from London. You may have heard Zann there referring to the Israeli military's largest aerial operation in Israel's history. Why is Israel hitting such a wide range of Syrian installations, from Damascus to Latakia to areas near ports to intelligence buildings?
Why do snakes bite? Why do birds sing? It's the nature of things; it's the nature of Israel. One doesn't have to simply look at the last few weeks and months to see genocide in Gaza and war crimes in Lebanon. One can go back 75 years, 80 years, and look at Israel since its inception. What has it been? In a state of war, a continuous, consistent state of war—bombing, destabilizing countries, carrying out genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing—all of it for the same reason, presumably: its security. Under the pretext of security, Israel would carry out the worst kind of violations of international law, the worst kind of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and that's what we've seen it do.
Now, certainly in this very particular instance, it's taking advantage of the fact that there is a bit of chaos, if you will, or dramatic change in Syria after 50 years of more of the same in order to settle scores with a country that it has always deemed to be a dangerous enemy, and that is Syria. So I think the idea of decapitating, destabilizing, undercutting, and undermining Syria and Syria's national security will always be a main goal for Israel.
Maran, when we talk about security, let's put it into the context of reality. Okay, because Syria, of course, is occupied by Israel, not vice versa, right? So help us to put into context when we hear an Israeli government that says this is defensive, this is preventative. How would we interpret this if we were talking about Russia launching strikes on Ukraine while the West looked at Russia as the occupying power? And it says, "Yeah, but you know, you're getting weapons in from the West, and we need to take a defensive posture to protect an occupation."
But this is exactly the thing, right? Every act of offense is defined by Israel as defense when, in fact, by every measure, it is an offensive aggression against a neighboring country. That includes, for example, occupying the Golan Heights. Why did Israel occupy and continuously then annex and illegally settle the Golan Heights? Security. Why does it continuously, after six decades, occupy the West Bank and Gaza? Security. Why is it illegally settling in the West Bank? Security. Why is it carrying out genocide? Security. Why did it bomb the hell out of Lebanon and invade Lebanon in 1982, and then again and again? Security.
So its definition of security, which by the way has been embraced by London, Paris, Washington, and the rest of them, who continuously, until this very day, justify Israel's offensive aggression against Syria by saying, "Well, you know, it has to defend itself." So it's always using the pretext of security.
What is Israel getting out of this? The land grabs on the Golan Heights, the wide range of airstrikes—what is it benefiting and getting out of this? It depends who you talk to, right? If you talk to some of the mainstream military generals in Israel, they'll tell you, "We need to continuously expand and continuously weaken every other country in the region because only by weakening our neighbors can we remain strong and secure."
If you talk to the more religiously fanatical members of the Israeli government today, the likes of SMR, who just recently gave an interview saying that Israel, in his definition, should extend its borders to Lebanon and Syria, they think in this very particular Israeli government that their borders, as they stand today, even with the Golan Heights, are not enough. They think that Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria should be part of a greater Israel—that this was all promised to them.
So really, it depends who you talk to in Israel. But regardless of who you talk to, at the end of the day, Israel is violating international law, violating the sovereignty of its neighbors, and taking aggressive, destabilizing military action. I think, in the long term, Israel will not be able to survive in the region while it is so aggressively criminal.
How long can the new administration in Syria, which is obviously still settling in, go on ignoring this? Where is this going to drive that frontier and that dynamic? You know, just a friendly reminder to our viewers around the world who have been doubting the transition in Syria—and I myself, of course, have my doubts—but Israel has been bombing the hell out of Syria now for a good decade, right? I mean, sometimes we went for one or two bombings a week in Syria. So this is not new—the bombing of Iranian targets, Syrian targets, Hezbollah targets, whatever you want to call them in Syria.
So they really have been doing it again and again, not at all bothering with the consequences because they think, as long as they can do it, they're going to go on and do it. And I think they understand that the new, whatever it is, government or transitional authority in Syria is not going to be able to respond much because there's so much to deal with in Syria itself. At the end of the day, it's basically more or less like a failed state, and they need to heal the wounds internally before they actually take care of anything else.
So this is nothing to be settled in the short term, but in the long term, and that's why the likes of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and countries that are presumably friendly have been condemning what Israel is doing.
That's Marwan Bishara for us, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst. Make sure to subscribe to our channel to get the latest news from Al Jazeera.