LONDON: Israel’s sporadic strikes on southern Syria and its push to demilitarize the region are prompting concern about an alleged plan to carve up the country. At the center of speculation is a land bridge — a so-called David’s Corridor — from the occupied Golan Heights in the south to Kurdish-controlled territory in the northeast.
These concerns intensified in July, when Israel carried out several airstrikes on government buildings in Damascus and against Syrian forces near Suweida, saying it sought to protect the Druze minority amid deadly sectarian clashes.
On Aug. 28, Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “focusing on three things: protecting the Druze community in the Suweida governorate, but not only there; creating a demilitarized zone stretching from the Golan Heights (passing) south of Damascus down to and including Suweida; and establishing a humanitarian corridor to allow the delivery of aid.”
Satellite images analyzed by BBC Verify show new Israeli bases built in and around the UN-patrolled demilitarized zone. (Reuters)
In a video shared by his office, the Israeli prime minister claimed that discussions with the Syrian government on these measures were underway.
Syrian officials struck a different note. Four days earlier, interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa said his priority was “a return to the 1974 disengagement agreement or a similar arrangement — establishing security in southern Syria under international supervision,” Al-Majalla reported.
That accord, signed after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, created a UN-monitored buffer zone on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Al-Sharaa also noted in public remarks on Aug. 17 that his interim government has “another battle ahead of us to unify Syria, and it should not be with blood and military force … it should be through some kind of understanding because Syria is tired of war.”
Netanyahu’s video statement followed a reported meeting in Paris between Asaad Al-Shaibani, Syria’s foreign minister, and Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister. Talks centered on de-escalation and the volatile situation in Suweida, according to Syrian state media.
The violence in Syria’s southernmost governorate erupted in mid-July, when clashes between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes killed more than 200 people in days. Government forces entered Suweida city on July 15, imposed a curfew, and said they were there to “restore stability.”
That deployment drew Israel into the fight. Its forces struck Syrian military convoys, tanks and installations in Suweida and Damascus, describing the attacks as warnings to the Al-Sharaa government.
Since a coalition of opposition factions toppled Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes across Syria. One of the latest came in late August, when an Israeli drone hit a Syrian army facility in Kiswah, west of Damascus, a defense ministry official told AFP.
Rights groups say Druze civilians have indeed borne the brunt of the violence. Amnesty International said on Sept. 2 it had documented “compelling new evidence” that government and allied forces carried out “extrajudicial executions of Druze people on 15 and 16 July in Suweida.”
Some analysts say Israel’s intervention in Syria goes beyond humanitarian claims.(Reuters)
Syrian authorities denied involvement.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis in the Druze heartland has deepened. Ongoing clashes, looting, and displacement have left more than 187,000 people — Druze, Christian and Bedouin — in need of shelter, food, water and medical care, according to a UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report.
The Aug. 29 report also highlighted that insecurity, blocked routes, and explosive hazards continue to complicate aid delivery.
However, some analysts say Israel’s intervention in Syria goes beyond humanitarian claims. They see the Netanyahu government reshaping southern Syria’s security landscape while presenting its actions as minority protection.
“Today, clearly, Israel sees a potential ally in the Druze, and that’s one of the motivations behind their intervention in Syria,” Ibrahim Al-Assil, the Syria Project lead for the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs, told BBC in July.
He added in the televised interview that after Assad’s fall, Israel decided “to take things into their own hands” and not trust any upcoming Syrian government for its security, and instead launched a sweeping air campaign.
Hussam Hammoud, a Syrian journalist, echoes that assessment, saying Israel is motivated partly by security concerns and partly by a desire to project power. According to him, Israel’s military operations in Syria are “driven largely, as declared, by Israel’s concerns over uncontrolled attacks that could spill into the territory Israel controls.”
“At the same time, Israel is keen to demonstrate its dominance to the entire region, particularly to the emerging governments in Syria and Lebanon, especially in the aftermath of the crippling or severe weakening of Iran’s proxy forces along its borders,” he told Arab News.
Indeed, Iran’s proxies in the Levant have suffered heavy blows. Hezbollah has lost strength in southern Lebanon since the September 2024 escalation, during which Israel killed the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. Hamas, too, has been severely weakened by Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.
Israeli Druze men look on as they wait to greet Syrian Druze who cross the border from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. (Reuters)
Nevertheless, Hammoud cautioned that “new proxy actors are beginning to take shape in the region.”
Other analysts point to the Druze dimension in Israel. “If you’re Druze in the southern province of Suweida in Syria, you’re thankful that Israel carried out these attacks,” said Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group.
He explained in a July interview with CNN that Israel’s attacks “held back what are ostensibly government forces, but in reality, really, jihadi fighters.” He added that some of those fighters were foreign and, therefore, “more willing to commit these atrocities.”
UN experts voiced concerns last month over armed attacks on Druze communities in and around Suweida, with reports of massacres, destruction of property, and sexual violence against women and girls, coupled with online incitement “portraying them (the Druze) as Israeli allies.”
Israel’s strikes and warnings to the Al-Sharaa government have certainly played a role in pushing toward a US-brokered ceasefire. The truce ended Druze-Bedouin clashes and forced government troops to withdraw, but it remains fragile.
FASTFACTS
• In December, Israel invaded southern Syria, occupying about 400 sq. km and declaring the 1974 disengagement deal void after Assad’s fall.
• It also says its presence prevents arms transfers to Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, secures its northern border, protects Syria’s Druze and Kurds.
• In mid-July, Israel carried out strikes on Suweida and Damascus, saying they were needed to protect Syria’s Druze community.
Nevertheless, Maksad stressed that Israel’s humanitarian motives must not be exaggerated. “We have to remember also that there had been more than a decade-old civil war in Syria. Over half a million Syrians have lost their lives,” he said. “Israel did not intervene then to help anybody.”
“So clearly here, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu ought to defend what is Israeli interest, Israeli influence in southern Syria,” he added. “He’s much buoyed by the recent war against Iran, where he emerged victorious, also against Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
Domestic politics may also be a factor. Israel’s 150,000-strong Druze community, concentrated in Galilee, Carmel and the Golan Heights, lobbied heavily for intervention, Maksad noted.
Indeed, about 80 percent of Druze men serve in the IDF, according to the UK-based Religion Media Center.
Rights groups say Druze civilians have indeed borne the brunt of the violence. (Reuters)
Moreover, on Sept. 2, Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif, the Druze spiritual leader in Israel, told Euronews during a visit to Brussels that “if there had been no Israeli intervention, the Druze community in Suweida would have been wiped out.”
In Suweida, residents say an unofficial siege has persisted since July’s violence. Some have reportedly called for a safe route linking them to the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria.
Mazloum Abdi, chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was quoted as saying on July 16 that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) had received appeals from the Druze in Suweida to “secure safe passages for civilians and to stop the attacks targeting them.”
“The cause of our Druze people is a national issue, and its solution must be constitutional and through resorting to dialogue,” he said.
That plea raises a larger question: Could Israel’s demand for a demilitarized zone and an aid route signal ambitions for a “David’s Corridor”?
The Toronto-based Geopolitical Monitor says that the corridor, though never officially announced, “emerges as a discernible pattern of operations, alliances, and infrastructural ambitions that together suggest a coherent design.”
But Al-Sharaa does not see Syria at risk of division. “Some people desire a process of dividing Syria and trying to establish cantons ... this matter is impossible,” he said in a televised address on Aug. 17.
For its part, Israel justifies its bombing campaign in Syria as an attack on what it calls a government of “terrorists.”
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, which led the December assault that ousted Assad, is an Al-Qaeda affiliate. But the US administration, as it softens its approach to post-war Syria, said in early July it was revoking HTS’s designation as a foreign terrorist organization.
However, even as Washington works to balance Israel’s security demands with Syria’s territorial integrity, Israeli forces recently advanced into the southern province of Quneitra.
“Despite the declared hostility, widely interpreted as Israeli hostility toward the Syrian transitional government, both sides remain at the negotiating table, maintaining an open and uncontested political channel,” Hammoud, the Syrian journalist, said.
Analysts say the Netanyahu government reshaping southern Syria’s security landscape while presenting its actions as minority protection. (Reuters)
Israel’s assaults have drawn international condemnation. called them a “flagrant violation” of Syria’s sovereignty and international law. Qatar urged decisive action to halt what it called “repeated attacks on Syrian territory.”
On the ground, Israel has entrenched itself. Satellite images analyzed by BBC Verify show new Israeli bases built in and around the UN-patrolled demilitarized zone.
At the same time, ties with Kurdish forces in the northeast are believed to have grown. Israel has long supported autonomy for Syrian Kurds, backing their independence referendum in 2017 and later endorsing calls for semi-autonomy in post-Assad Syria.
But also, AANES leaders have sought accommodation with Al-Sharaa’s government. A March agreement between Abdi and Al-Sharaa aimed to integrate Kurdish forces into the transitional government, a deal Washington welcomed as a step toward reconstruction.
However, a recent eruption of clashes between the SDF and government forces in parts of Deir Ezzor and Aleppo underscored the deal’s fragility.
Some see opportunity in the “David Corridor” speculation. Ashtyako Poorkarim, head of the Kurdistan Independence Movement in Iran, wrote in The Times of Israel that a David’s Corridor could serve as “a new bridge between Israel, Kurdistan and the West.”
Israeli Druze greet Syrian Druze who cross the border from Syria. (Reuters)
But Hammoud dismissed the idea as little more than rumor. “Frankly, I don’t believe the project exists beyond rumors and political analysis that aspires to turn speculation into reality,” he said, stressing that “there is no concrete field or operational evidence for such a corridor.”
“The complex geographic and demographic changes make the project unfeasible,” he told Arab News. “The overlap of international and regional powers (the international actors who will lose their access in Syria with such a project) creates almost insurmountable obstacles to its implementation.”
Hammoud believes “the idea is used more as a tool of pressure and mobilization than as a realistic plan,” adding that “local and military actors (including Druze) have denied all claims about the existence of or support for such a route.”
“David’s Corridor” may very well remain a rumor, but Israel’s strikes, incursions and bases undeniably have created new facts on the ground. Under the circumstance, the greater question is whether unity can prevail in a Syria struggling with unrest long after its civil war has ended.
