Israel intensifies Syria attacks, but HTS leader says doesn’t want conflict

Israeli air forces have carried out dozens of attacks targeting military and ammunition sites across Syria, as the de facto Syrian leader warned against the incursion but added that his country does not want a new conflict.

“More than 60 Israeli air strikes took place over the last 12 hours,” Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from the Syrian capital, Damascus, said, adding that Israel has conducted about 800 air raids across Syria since the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last week.

“We have heard several loud explosions, which have been almost a routine here. The focus of Israeli air strikes is Damascus and its outskirts,” said Serdar, confirming that ammunition depots and air defence systems had been struck in a district of Damascus.

“This has been part of the Israeli strategy since the fall of the al-Assad regime to leave the country without air defences against its attacks,” Serdar said.

Israeli forces have also destroyed roads, power lines, and water networks in the southeastern Quneitra region after people refused to follow their orders to evacuate, according to Al Jazeera’s Muntasir Abou Nabout.

“Israeli tanks are now stationed in towns and villages in Syria’s southwest as the Israeli military expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights,” said Nabout, reporting from Quneitra.

Israeli troops entered the United Nations-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights last weekend in a move the UN said violated the 1974 armistice agreement.

The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Israel launched 61 missiles at Syrian military sites in less than five hours overnight, striking military warehouses in Homs, Deraa, Suwayda and the Qalamoun mountains near Damascus, as well as air defences at the Hama airport.

SOHR also published footage from what it said was an Israeli attack on a military camp in the town of Ain Mneen near Damascus.

The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and de facto head of Syria’s new administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said Israelis can no longer justify their recent actions in Syria, but added that his country was not in a position to be drawn into a new conflict.

“The Israelis have clearly crossed the disengagement line in Syria, which threatens a new unjustified escalation in the region,” al-Sharaa said, adding that despite the violation, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts.”

“The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability,” he added.

Speaking to journalists in Damascus, he also pledged to disband all Syrian factions, declaring that “no weapons will exist outside the authority of the Syrian state”.

Meanwhile, the United States said on Saturday that it had made contact with HTS, despite the US having designated the group as “terrorist” in 2018.

“We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters, without specifying how the contact took place.

Blinken and other diplomats from the Arab states and Turkiye held talks on Syria in Aqaba, Jordan, on Saturday.

In a joint statement, they called for a Syrian-led transition to “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process”, with respect for human rights.

Rob Geist Pinfold, lecturer in peace and security at Durham University, noted that since the start of the Israeli attacks, there has been a growing “disconnect” between Israel and the US. He said Israel is striking Syria “simply because they can”.

“They don’t know about the new regime and who is on the other side,” he told Al Jazeera. “The Israelis are erring on the side of caution here. The problem is they also escalate.”

The fact that Syria’s new rulers are saying they do not intend to fight Israel, Pinfold said, is “a huge change because Syria has been a core state who’s been fighting Israel for decades”.

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