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June 28, 2025: Since the Assad clan fled to Russia last year, there was an opportunity to form a new Syrian government. Israel was also eager to rearrange their border with Syria to increase security. The Israelis didn’t want to negotiate and were willing to fight for what they needed. Israel quickly moved into 460 square kilometers of Syria. The new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa was previously an Islamic terrorist but was determined to establish a lasting and legitimate government.
Ahmed al-Sharaa organized and led the rapid offensive in November 2024 that conquered all Syria in less than two weeks. He now had much to offer. He had severed the land link between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Previously, in September, novel Israeli use of exploding pagers and portable radios left thousands of Hezbollah members, and most of the leaders, dead or wounded. Israel followed up with air strikes on Lebanese targets where the remaining Hezbollah leaders were hiding. Hezbollah was largely destroyed, and it would require a year or more to rebuild the organization. That might not work because Israeli airstrikes may continue until Hezbollah is erased.
All of this tells Syria’s new rulers that they made the right decision in adopting a peaceful policy towards Israel. This includes diplomatic relations and a resumption of legitimate trade. This puts a lot of smugglers out of business, but the new Syrian government wants to legalize and regulate everything to escape the chaos of the past. Establishing stable relations with neighboring Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon brings prosperity for everyone.
These recent developments are a major change from the situation fourteen years ago. Back then the armed conflict between the Arab world and Israel seemed never-ending, particularly to those who were newcomers to the region's historical record. Israel has had to fight at least three wars against its Arab neighbors in the previous decade. Two of these were against the Palestinian territories, Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002, the 34-day Lebanon War in 2006, and the Gaza War, Operation Cast Lead in 2009. Defensive Shield, far from just a limited anti-terrorist mission, was the largest military operation conducted in the West Bank since the Six Day War in 1967.
Three major wars in ten years, not to mention many minor actions to deter insurgents, seemed like a tremendous amount of activity and could lead one to think that Israel's position in the Middle East was fundamentally unchangeable. In other words, that country's very existence will always foment never-ending war. To a certain extent, this is true. Israel will likely continue to fight wars against its Arab neighbors for decades to come, both of the Islamic terrorist and conventional variety.
However, Israel today is in a much better military and national security position than it has been throughout most of its history. Israel still faces major threats to its security, but a detailed look at the country's history over the past 78 years has shown that Israel has utilized a shrewd and cunning mixture of diplomacy and military force to not only ensure the continued survival of the nation, but to a large extent deter future invasions and attacks.
When the nation was founded in 1948, it was immediately attacked by virtually the entire Arab world, with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan providing most of the troops, backed up by Palestinian irregular paramilitaries. For most of the next 20 years, Israel faced down all of the frontline Arab states in addition to fighting off terrorist attacks during the War of Attrition with Egypt.
At times, it seemed as though total war would continue to consume the region indefinitely. However, the era of constant conventional warfare actually ended much earlier than many analysts predicted. Until 1967, the Arab world had determined that it would make no peace with Israel. All of the major Arab nations, including countries as far away as Algeria and the Sudan, not only remained in a perpetual state of war but refused to even recognize Israel's existence, a dire situation for Israel. The Six Day War in 1967 was a total defeat for the Arabs, proving that it would be near impossible to actually threaten the state's existence.
After Anwar Sadat became the Egyptian president in 1970, he was smart enough to realize that completely overrunning the Jewish state was neither a realistic nor desirable goal. He was determined to continue on a course of war with Israel, but with more realistic war aims. This included recovery of seized lands in Sinai and recovery of military respect for Egypt. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt had recovered its reputation as a competent, or at least less incompetent, military power. Yet Egypt had still been thoroughly defeated once again by the Israel Defense Force/IDF, which had crossed into Africa and completely cut off an entire field army by the end of the war. Israel quickly seized onto Sadat's peace overtures and eventually signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, gaining recognition of its right to exist from the Egyptians, cessation of the state of war between the two countries, and effectively knocking out one of the two most dangerous Arab combatants.
There was now a temporary peace with Syria. Wars in Lebanon against the Syrians and the PLO in the '80s further convinced Arab nations of the futility of making open warfare against Israel. Peace with Jordan followed in the late '90s, knocking down another domino in the pantheon of potential threats. The humiliation suffered by Yasser Arafat and the PLO at the hands of Israelis in Lebanon during Operation Peace for Galilee in 1982 effectively ejected Arafat's armed group from the country and went a long way towards paving the way for the Oslo Accords in 1993 that ended the PLO's armed campaign.
Thus, through a mixture of diplomacy and force, Israel established a better, safer position than it has throughout most of its history. Egypt and Jordan had no desire to make another war against Israel, despite the fact that both have relatively well-trained, well-led and, in Egypt's case, massive ground forces at their disposal. Syria's military was so weak and underfunded, it would take years to completely rebuild while a full-scale war would be not only foolish, but suicidal.
Today Iraq is struggling with its own internal problems, the new Syrian government is not in control of all of Syria and has no control whatever of much of it, while Jordan and Egypt, dependent as they are on the United States, would be unwilling to send even token forces to aid in an armed conflict.
By 2011 Israel's biggest problems remained insurgent groups equipped, funded, trained, and harbored by Syria and Iran, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hezbollah was the biggest of these threats but is now decapitated, disorganized, out of money and out of contact with its Iranian patron. Hamas barely exists under Israeli siege in Gaza. Since Operation Defensive Shield ended, the threat from Fatah-related groups, like the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, have decreased dramatically.
All in all, since 2011 Israel was less under siege than it has been in the past.