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Damascus governor says new Syrian regime wants peace: ‘Our problem is not with Israel’
In an interview with the US public broadcaster NPR, apparently on behalf of Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, the governor of Damascus said Thursday that the newly-installed government wants to have cordial relations with Israel.
“We have no fear toward Israel, and our problem is not with Israel,” Maher Marwan told NPR, “There exists a people who want coexistence. They want peace. They don’t want disputes.”
“And we don’t want to meddle in anything that will threaten Israel’s security or any other country’s security,” he said. “We want peace, and we cannot be an opponent to Israel or an opponent to anyone.”
He added that Israel’s initial trepidation after the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad was “natural.”
“Israel may have felt fear,” he said. “So it advanced a little, bombed a little, etc.”
Earlier in December, after the rebels took control of Damascus in a lightning offensive, Israel launched a major operation to destroy Syria’s strategic military capabilities, including chemical weapons sites, missiles, air defenses, air force and navy targets, in a bid to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile elements.
In a move that drew some international condemnation, Israel also entered a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.
Israel has said it will not become involved in the conflict in Syria and that its seizure of the buffer zone established in 1974 was a defensive move and a temporary one until it can guarantee security along the frontier.
Israel has also signaled its desire to have “correct ties” with the new regime, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in early December, but “if this regime allows Iran to reestablish itself in Syria, or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to Hezbollah, or attacks us, we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price from it.”
He warned the rebels that “whoever follows Assad’s footsteps will end up like Assad did. We won’t allow an extremist Islamic terror entity to act against Israel from beyond its borders… we will do anything to remove the threat.”
Syria’s new de-facto leader al-Sharaa, also known by his nom de-guerre Abu Muhammad al-Julani, has said that his new regime is “committed to the 1974 agreement and we are prepared to return the UN [monitors],” referring to peacekeeping forces that manned the demilitarized zone alongside Syrian troops.
“We do not want any conflict whether with Israel or anyone else and we will not let Syria be used as a launchpad for attacks. The Syrian people need a break, and the strikes must end and Israel has to pull back to its previous positions,” al-Sharaa told The Times of London earlier this month.
Al-Sharaa also reiterated his position that Israel had a right to target Iranian-backed forces prior to the government’s fall earlier this month, but has no legitimate basis to keep operating in Syria.
Israel and Syria do not have diplomatic relations and have formally been in a perpetual state of war since Israel declared independence in 1948.
Syria was one of a number of Arab countries that attacked the newly born Jewish state, and despite an armistice agreement signed in 1949 that demarcated a border between the two countries, Syria has never formally recognized Israel’s existence.
Syria also attacked during the 1967 Six Day War, before the IDF pounded Syrian forces and seized the Golan Heights, which Israel later annexed unilaterally. Syria attacked again in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War and was pushed back after a major advance into the Golan Heights, after which the 1974 disengagement agreement was signed between the states, marking the demilitarized zones on the Israel-Syrian border.
While the fall of the Assad regime, which stood for over five decades, could provide a historic opportunity for recognition between Israel and its neighbor, the potential power vacuum in Syria could also lead to further chaos and serve as a breeding ground for a resurgence of terror in the region.
Times of Israel