Israel and the Syrian Civil War

The Syrian revolt began in March 2011, disrupting a relationship in which Israel and Syria remained hostile but had also pursued indirect peace talks.[2] Bashar al-Assad’s government responded to unrest with military force; an insurgency spread in 2012, followed by more than a decade of conflict and foreign intervention.[1] For Israel, the uprising raised questions about border stability, the future of the Syrian government, and the possibility that hostile armed organizations would exploit the breakdown of state authority.[2]

Israeli policymakers weighed assistance to opposition groups and humanitarian relief against the risks of entering a neighboring Arab state’s internal conflict.[2] Factors favoring restraint included the opposition’s weakness, the early involvement of Islamist and jihadist organizations, and concern about the consequences of Israeli intervention in Syrian politics.[2] The government initially preferred avoiding a potentially more hostile successor to Assad and was reluctant to repeat the costs of intervention in another Arab country.[5]

Israel’s central concerns included fighting spilling across the border and radical Islamist or Iranian forces gaining positions near the Golan Heights.[6] The Syrian government’s concentration on its own survival changed the security environment along that frontier.[6] Israel’s subsequent involvement developed primarily around these security concerns rather than open participation in the war between government and opposition forces.[1]

Israel’s stated red lines included responding to fire or attacks originating in Syria against Israel or the Golan Heights, preventing advanced weapons from reaching Hezbollah, and preventing chemical or biological weapons from falling into terrorist hands.[2] Humanitarian assistance formed another element of a policy intended to keep Israel largely outside the struggle for control of Syria.[7] That approach became more complicated as Islamic State expanded, Iran and Hezbollah deepened their involvement, and Russia entered the conflict in 2015.[2]

In November 2012, mortars fired from Syria landed in Israel, apparently accidentally, and Israel answered with artillery fire directed at the source of the shelling.[6] The response was intended to signal that fire into Israeli territory would not be tolerated.[6] In early March 2013, three Syrian mortar rounds landed outside Ramat Magshimim, while Syrian rebels kidnapped 21 United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the Golan; the peacekeepers were released a week later.[8] Israel increased its military presence along the border amid concern about nearby armed groups and foreign fighters.[8]

In June 2013, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was not intervening in the war “as long as fire is not being directed at us.”[9] He also argued that fighting near the Golan and the weakening of the UN force demonstrated that international forces could not serve as the foundation of Israeli security.[9] The UN disengagement peacekeepers subsequently pulled back from the area in 2014 after fighting between Syrian government and opposition forces and the temporary abduction of peacekeepers from Fiji and the Philippines.[10]

An explosive device on the Israel–Syria border wounded four Israeli soldiers in March 2014.[6] Netanyahu blamed the Syrian military for assisting the attack, and Israel responded with artillery fire and airstrikes against military targets in southern Syria.[6] The United States supported Israel’s right to defend itself against spillover violence and coordinated with Israel to monitor extremist threats in Syria.[11] In September 2014, Israel also shot down a Syrian aircraft over the Golan after it entered Israeli airspace.[6]

Border incidents continued as the government recovered territory in 2018.[10] After a Syrian mortar shell exploded in the buffer zone, the IDF struck the Syrian outpost from which it said the shell had been fired, while reiterating that it would not intervene in the internal fighting.[12] In July, Israel intercepted a Syrian Sukhoi fighter that had penetrated two kilometers into Israeli airspace, firing two Patriot missiles from the Tzfat area.[13] The IDF linked its response to enforcing the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement amid increased fighting and Syrian air-force activity.[13]

Israeli air operations were reported from 2012 onward, frequently against locations and convoys near Lebanon associated with weapons shipments to Hezbollah.[10] In January 2013, foreign reports cited by INSS attributed to Israel a strike on an alleged convoy carrying advanced weapons, apparently SA-17 surface-to-air missiles, from Syria toward Hezbollah in Lebanon.[14] Further reported strikes in May 2013 destroyed missiles at Damascus International Airport that Iran was reportedly attempting to transfer through Syria to Hezbollah.[6]

A January 2015 strike on a convoy near Quneitra reportedly killed an Iranian general and senior Hezbollah commanders.[7] In 2016, Israel intensified attacks against Iranian assets through its “campaign between the wars,” seeking to impede weapons supplies and Iranian military entrenchment without escalating into open war.[7] During the Assad era, operations inside Syria were predominantly airstrikes against Iranian assets and personnel, Hezbollah operatives, and other Iran-backed forces.[2]

By 2018, Israeli disclosures indicated a sustained operational campaign rather than isolated retaliatory raids.[10] Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said Israel had taken military action inside Syria more than 200 times during the preceding two years.[10] A later account said the IDF had acknowledged more than 400 airstrikes in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East since 2017 as part of the “campaign between the wars,” targeting assets including air-defense systems, drone bases, and precision-guided missiles intended for Hezbollah.[6]

Israel continued to distinguish its opposition to Iranian entrenchment from the question of who governed Syria.[10] Israeli officials told Russian counterparts that Israel could accept Assad’s continued rule if Iran-backed forces left the country.[10] Netanyahu reiterated that position after meeting Vladimir Putin in July 2018, referring to the history of stability along the Golan frontier.[10] Israel nevertheless opposed the possibility of Iranian infrastructure creating a new Hezbollah front on its northern border.[10]

The campaign continued after 2018.[15] On November 20, 2019, the IDF announced strikes on dozens of Iranian Quds Force and Syrian army targets in response to four rockets launched toward the northern Golan the previous day, all intercepted by Iron Dome.[15] It also said Syrian air-defense batteries were destroyed after firing on Israeli aircraft.[15] On January 2, 2024, the IDF confirmed that aircraft had attacked Syrian army infrastructure overnight in response to rockets targeting the Golan Heights.[16]

Israeli strikes in Syria continued during Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah following the October 7, 2023 attacks.[1] In September 2024, Israeli forces conducted a joint air-and-ground operation against a Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center facility identified as an underground production site for precision-guided missiles.[17] The operation marked a departure from the predominantly airstrike-based methods of preceding years.[17]

In February 2018, Israel shot down an Iranian drone that had entered Israeli territory from Syria and subsequently attacked its launch base.[2][18] Syrian antiaircraft fire downed an Israeli F-16 during the ensuing operation, and its crew ejected over northern Israel.[18] Israel then struck additional Syrian and Iranian military targets.[18] An April 9 strike on the T-4 base near Palmyra killed four Iranian military advisers.[6]

On May 10, the Israeli military attributed rocket fire against Israeli positions in the Golan to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force, describing it as retaliation for earlier Israeli attacks on Iranian targets.[19] Israel answered with strikes on dozens of Iranian military sites.[6] The response was described as Israel’s largest operation in Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War and as the largest Israeli Air Force operation in decades.[19][6] Israel claimed that the attacks had destroyed nearly all of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria.[6]

Russia’s intervention on Assad’s side in 2015 had introduced an additional operational constraint.[2] Israel developed military deconfliction with Russia to reduce the risk of clashes between their forces in Syria.[2] The arrangement permitted communication around operations despite the two countries’ different relationships with the Syrian government and Iranian-backed forces.[2]

In September 2018, Israeli aircraft struck military targets in coastal Latakia province.[10] A Syrian antiaircraft battery responding to the strikes shot down a Russian military aircraft, killing 15 Russian personnel.[10] An IDF spokesperson said the jets had targeted a Syrian facility involved in manufacturing weapons intended for transfer to Hezbollah on Iran’s behalf and blamed extensive and inaccurate Syrian antiaircraft fire for the Russian aircraft’s destruction.[10] Russia subsequently supplied Syria with an S-300 air-defense system.[18] The incident exposed the risks that Israeli operations posed to relations with Moscow as well as to aircraft operating in Syrian airspace.[20]

The arrival of seven injured Syrians at the Israeli border in early 2013 helped launch a humanitarian effort that expanded from emergency treatment into organized cross-border assistance.[3] Wounded Syrians were initially treated at the border and in field hospitals, then increasingly in Israeli hospitals.[21] The IDF Northern Command formally established Operation Good Neighbor in June 2016, with its first coordinated activities taking place that August.[22] Its stated purpose was to assist civilians while maintaining Israel’s policy of noninvolvement in the fighting.[22]

The operation combined medical care with food, fuel, clothing, and infrastructure supplies.[22] Assistance included medicines, generators, water pipes, flour, baby formula, diapers, shoes, and winter clothing.[22] One account identified approximately 200,000 residents of the Hauran region as the primary recipients, including displaced families living in tents near the border; it estimated that one-third of recipients were displaced people or refugees and half were younger than 18.[22] By 2018, another assessment estimated that aid to communities in Quneitra and, to a lesser extent, Deraa reached approximately 300,000 people.[23]

Medical evacuations and deliveries were coordinated at night with rebel commanders and local community leaders.[23] Israeli officers identified both a humanitarian obligation and a security interest in stabilizing the border region and fostering a less hostile environment across it.[3][22] The program expanded beyond battlefield injuries to include a day clinic, treatment for chronic conditions, referrals for children, and assistance with childbirth.[24]

The Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, Ziv Medical Center in Safed, and Poriya Medical Center in Tiberias treated Syrians from a roughly 40-kilometer strip between Quneitra and the triple border.[21] The area’s population was estimated at approximately 200,000 and was described as cut off from Damascus.[21] Increasing treatment of illnesses unrelated to combat reflected the collapse of local health services as well as changing patterns of fighting and territorial control.[21] A clinic operated by a U.S. organization on the Syrian side under Israeli protection had treated approximately 4,000 patients by March 2018; a military officer said donations supplied 90 percent of humanitarian activity and that NIS 270 million had been raised, principally for medical equipment and medicines.[21]

A study of the first 100 Syrian war patients treated at Ziv Hospital provides a detailed view of the early medical response.[25] Treatment was free at the point of care; 94 patients were male, 17 were younger than 18, and 52 were in their twenties.[25] Fifty had gunshot wounds and 29 had blast injuries.[25] Two patients with multiple trauma died, eight were transferred for specialist treatment, and 90 returned to Syria after discharge.[25] Hospital protocols were adapted to address both clinical and social needs arising from acute and chronic consequences of war.[25]

By October 2017, more than 4,000 Syrians had been admitted to Israeli hospitals.[3] Approximately 6,800 Syrians, including more than 1,000 children, were subsequently reported to have crossed for treatment before the border clinic closed in August 2018.[6] A separate IDF-derived account listed transfers including 450,000 liters of fuel, 225 tons of food, 40 tons of flour, 12,000 packages of baby formula, and 55 tons of cold-weather clothing.[22]

Aid workers and patients also faced dangers beyond the fighting itself.[26] In June 2015, Druze residents near Majdal Shams attacked a military ambulance transporting two injured Syrians, killing one and injuring the other.[26] The attack followed anger over assaults on Druze villages across the border and was condemned by the Druze spiritual leader, Israel’s prime minister, and senior officials.[26]

Israel’s contacts with opposition groups near the Golan developed alongside humanitarian assistance and efforts to prevent Hezbollah and other Iran-linked forces from controlling the frontier.[2][19] In 2019, outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot acknowledged that Israel had provided light weapons to rebel groups near the border, describing them as weapons “for self-defense.”[6] That acknowledgment followed years of Israeli statements emphasizing noninvolvement in Syria’s internal fighting.[6]

Reports based on interviews with rebel figures described a broader covert program involving money, arms, and other supplies to at least 12 southern Syrian rebel groups between 2013 and 2018.[6] The reported support included salaries of approximately $75 per month and ended as government forces recaptured the area.[6] Its scale was described as small compared with assistance from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States.[6]

In a 2025 retrospective, former Northern Command commander Yair Golan recalled meetings with nearby rebel militias concerning medical treatment, food, clothing, and winter fuel.[24] He regarded cooperation as a means of improving border security.[24] The later establishment of the Good Neighbor unit in 2016 separated its humanitarian-aid work from the intelligence channel used for contacts.[24]

The Syrian government’s recovery of southwestern territory in summer 2018 restored its forces to the area adjoining the Israeli-controlled Golan.[10] The offensive involved airstrikes, artillery, and rocket attacks in a region where the United States, Russia, and Jordan had established a cease-fire arrangement in July 2017.[10] Operation Good Neighbor ended after government forces returned to southern Syria and local rebel groups surrendered.[6] Israel also helped evacuate hundreds of White Helmets rescue workers and their families through its territory into Jordan at Western countries’ request, describing the action as a response to immediate danger to civilians rather than intervention in the fighting.[6]

Israel continued its security campaign after the aid operation closed, maintaining its distinction between the struggle for Syrian political control and action against concrete threats.[27] A further transition began in October 2024, when Israeli forces started moving into the UN Disengagement Observer Force zone as concern about the Syrian government’s stability increased.[17] Assad’s fall in December then prompted a substantially larger Israeli deployment and air campaign.[4]

Israel reinforced its Golan defenses and carried out hundreds of strikes against Syrian military bases, air defenses, ballistic missiles, weapons depots, aircraft, naval assets, and production and development facilities, including sites connected to chemical weapons.[4] Israeli forces seized the Area of Separation and a Syrian Mount Hermon outpost.[4] Israeli officials described the deployment as temporary and intended to protect Golan communities, prevent armed groups from entering the area, and contain instability.[4]

Israel also openly supported minority groups, particularly the Druze, during the initial post-Assad period.[28] Its posture became less confrontational in April–May 2025, with fewer strikes and less hawkish rhetoric.[28] Direct Israel–Syria talks were reported in May–July, although their goals were framed differently in Israel and Syria.[28]

The distinction between nonintervention in Syria’s internal struggle and active defense against threats from Syrian territory has been central to interpretations of Israeli policy.[1] Itamar Rabinovich’s contribution to a 2015 Jewish Review of Books symposium described two Israeli approaches: preferring the familiar Assad government to a possible Islamist successor, or supporting rebels in the hope of positive change.[5] He argued that Netanyahu chose the former and characterized Israel as among Syria’s least-involved neighbors, while emphasizing that its noninvolvement was limited rather than absolute.[5]

Rabinovich also argued that openly supporting moderate secular opponents could have helped Assad portray the rebellion as a foreign conspiracy.[5] His account included retaliatory border actions, unacknowledged strikes on weapons reportedly intended for Hezbollah, and limited tactical cooperation with jihadist groups near the cease-fire line to prevent Hezbollah from extending its confrontation with Israel.[5]

In the same symposium, Amos Yadlin argued that responding to incoming fire, assisting wounded Syrians, and blocking advanced weapons transfers had served Israeli security.[5] He nevertheless advocated undermining Assad, reasoning that his departure could weaken the Iran-led alliance and that a government responsible for a state might be more susceptible to deterrence than armed groups.[5] Yadlin warned against becoming trapped in prolonged direct intervention and proposed humanitarian corridors, no-fly zones, and targeted attacks on Syrian air forces as possible limited measures.[5] Elliott Abrams distinguished the medical effort, whose contemporary burden he considered small, from the larger strategic risks posed by state collapse and armed groups near Israel’s border.[5]

A 2019 analysis of the MABAM strategy identified the September 7, 2017 strike at Masyaf as the beginning of a subsequent phase in the campaign between the wars.[20] Its authors described Israeli policy as combining studied neutrality about the civil war’s outcome with action against Iranian entrenchment and advanced-weapons transfers.[20] They emphasized escalation, danger to Israeli aircraft, and damage to relations with Russia as major risks, and questioned whether deconfliction arrangements would withstand mounting tension.[20]

Amos Yadlin and Ari Heistein offered a sharper criticism in their 2018 review of Israeli strategy, rejecting the description “smart restraint.”[29] They argued that passivity had allowed Assad’s resurgence and created conditions for Iranian allies to establish another foothold on Israel’s northern front.[29] Their criticism concerned the strategic consequences of restraint rather than an absence of Israeli military action.[29]

The humanitarian effort also became a subject of academic study.[30] A 2020 article examined the unusual arrangement in which Syrian casualties received care inside the country from which the participating medical and security forces originated.[30] Its authors analyzed tensions between care owed to people as human beings and standards associated with care for Israeli residents, treating the program as a distinct form of humanitarian governance.[30]

The December 2024 deployment generated a major dispute over the 1974 disengagement agreement.[4] Israel described its presence in the buffer zone as temporary and defensive, while the Washington Institute characterized the seizure of the Area of Separation as violating the agreement.[4] The underlying status of the Golan also remained contested. INSS notes that the United States recognized Israeli sovereignty there in March 2019 and that Israel had applied its laws to the area in 1981, while distinguishing that action from formal annexation.[2]

Attribution of particular operations and attacks was not always settled.[14][19] INSS cited foreign reports describing the January 2013 target as a Hezbollah-bound weapons convoy, while Britannica’s account said Syrian officials described it as a military research facility and that Israel did not formally acknowledge the strike.[14][31] Iran denied firing at Israeli positions in May 2018, while Syrian media said Syria was involved.[19] After the Russian aircraft’s destruction in September 2018, the incident produced a diplomatic crisis: Israel blamed Syrian antiaircraft fire, while Russian officials sharply criticized Israeli operations.[10][20] These disputes accompanied a broader tension between Israel’s declared noninvolvement and its acknowledged military assistance to rebels and sustained air campaign.[6]