Syria’s leader accused Israel on Thursday of sowing discord with a wave of intense airstrikes following deadly sectarian clashes that threatened the country’s fragile unity and illustrated its neighbor’s capacity to attack across the region.
In a televised speech, Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa promised to protect the rights and freedom of Syria’s Druze community — and avoid an “open war” with Israel. He said Syria “will never be a place for division or fragmentation” as he called protecting the rights of the religious minority a “priority” of his administration.
His comments came after the Syrian government and leaders in the Druze community announced a renewed ceasefire Wednesday after days of clashes in the southern city of Sweida threatened the relative stability achieved in the country since the toppling of the Assad regime in December.
Government forces were withdrawing from the area, the Associated Press news agency reported, though a previous ceasefire in the area quickly crumbled and it was not immediately clear whether the latest truce would hold.
Israel launched rare strikes in Damascus and elsewhere on Wednesday in a campaign it said was aimed at defending the Druze, who also have a strong presence in Israel — and to force Islamic militants away from its border.
“We are not among those who fear war,” Sharaa said Thursday, as he accused Israel of “targeting our stability and creating discord among us since the fall of the former regime,” according to a transcript from the Reuters news agency. “But we put the interests of the Syrians before chaos and destruction,” he said, adding that local factions and sheikhs had been assigned the responsibility of maintaining security in Sweida.
“We are very worried about the violence in southern Syria,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday, calling it a “direct threat to efforts to help build a peaceful and stable Syria.” He added that the Trump administration had “been and remain in repeated and constant talks with the governments of Syria and Israel on this matter.”
The flare-up of violence appears to mark the most serious threat yet to the fragile control Syria’s new leadership holds over the country following dictator Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, with repeated eruptions of violence threatening to undermine Sharaa’s vow to rebuild a more inclusive Syria representative of its myriad religious and ethnic groups.
Sharaa has worked hard in recent months to shake off his past as a jihadist leader with links to both the Islamic State terrorist group and Al Qaeda. The Trump administration’s move to revoke the foreign terrorist organization designation for his Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham group signaled growing, but cautious, global confidence in his leadership.
