Tag Archives: Syria

05Jul/22

Israel and Syria: A Decade of War

Nir Boms &  Stéphane Cohen 

Happy to share my latest long-form article that summarizes  over a  decade of Israeli involvement  in Syria following the Syrian uprising-turned-war that began on March of 2011. The article summarizes a decade of work on the subject that became central to my work  and that also serves as a  fascinating chapter of Israeli foreign policy  which included an unprecedented humanitarian operation at its core. In the last decade, I had the chance of meeting hundreds  of Syrians. The engagement with Syrians happened  in   Syrian Refugee camps; on the ground with the Free Syrian Army; at Israeli hospitals that treated over 5,000 of them; in Jordan, Turkey, Europe and elsewhere where some of the first meetings between Syrians and Israelis took place; and, also, around my Shabbat table  which hosted many Syrian friends and partners throughout last decade.  All of that resulted in what I hope you will find as a useful analysis.

The enclosed, written with my friend and partner for this work Stéphane Cohen attempts to summarize a decade of Israeli involvement in Syria.

In August 2021, Israel and Lebanon marked fifteen years since the start of the Second Lebanon War. A month later, in September, the world marked twenty years since the 9/11 terror attacks and the end of the United States and NATO campaign in Afghanistan. But the year 2021 also marked ten years since the beginning of the war in Syria that continues despite the attempts to stabilize the country and begin rehabilitation efforts.


Eleven years ago, in Daraa, Syria—not far from Israel’s northern border—antiregime protests broke out following the arrests of Syrian teenagers responsible for antigovernmental graffiti. The “boys that started the Syrian revolution” quickly became one of its icons, and Daraa one of its symbols. A decade later, in 2021, it seems that little has changed. Bashar al-Assad continues to serve as Syria’s president, sworn in for seven more years1 (a fourth term) as he receives renewed legitimacy among the ranks of the Arab League and even in Israel. The Syrian army and its security forces—the same ones who “won” the war in 2018—continue to fight an insurgency in the south. Syrians are killed from both sides—regime and opposition alike (“Syrians,” as the war taught us, became a relative term for militias and foreign fighters on both sides). In the summer of 2021, shortly after the presidential elections, the regime decided to put an end to the bloody insurgency in southern Syria and sent troops, supported by Iranian proxies, to again crush defiant Daraa.

Although Daraa continues to burn, a decade of war has brought tectonic change to Syria, just like it altered the way Israel engaged with that country, its people,
and the Syrian arena at large. A decade of Israeli policy and involvement in Syria will be examined here, and some initial insights about the years ahead will be
offered

Full article in Israeli Journal of Foreign Affairs here

22Sep/20

The Syria conflict: Latest developments

Before it began, 2020 was assessed to be the last year of the Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011. This turned out to be either wishful thinking or an overly optimistic assumption which fell victim to the Coronavirus. As the year approaches its end, the conflict is still there, with most of the same domestic and foreign actors – the Assad regime and its opposition, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, the United States and various Jihadi groups. What are the military and political pictures?

Panel: – Jonathan Hessen, Host.

– Amir Oren, Analyst.

– Prof. Zeev Khanin, Expert on Russian and Middle Eastern Studies, Bar Ilan and Ariel Universities.

– Dr. Nir Boms, Research Fellow, Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.

10May/20

COVID-19 and the Cost of Human Life

See the source image

By NIR BOMS, HUSSEIN ABOUBAKR, Jerusalem Post, May 10th 2020

The recent weeks have awakened us to a new and unprecedented reality. Life is at stake, we are told, and life is precious, priceless, in fact. The world needs our actions to save life. There is no price for human life, unless of course it’s someone else’s life or someone else’s war. For that, we will not halt our world. We will not close a single shop. We might just change the channel.

The Covid-19 outbreak presented us with a real-life question of how far we are willing to protect and preserve life. For most of us, citizens of the “lucky world,” this was the first time such a question has been posed, not in a metaphysical sense but as one with real-life consequences. The disruption and the near-complete global halt is due to the drastic measures taken to curtail the spread of the virus. The world-wide response has indeed been impressive. Borders were shut, cities were locked down and national emergencies were declared. As it stands today, the unprecedented global death toll of the new virus has crossed the 250,000 mark, still mostly among the elderly. Our measures appear effective in slowing the virus’s progression and “flattening the curve.” But what more are we to do if that death toll climbs? How about 300,000? What if the number approaches half a million human lives lost to the pandemic?

When it comes to global crises, those numbers are not fictional. They are very real numbers of real lost lives from the last decade alone. Some 700,000 Syrians lost their lives since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, with a peak of 20,000 a month. Syrian healthcare systems, schools, infrastructures, water and sanitation system are entirely destroyed. Once-busy marketplaces and bazaars in historic city centers have been reduced to rubble and ash. Parents buried children who died from bombs or who drowned in the Mediterranean. The coronavirus might spare the lives of children, but war doesn’t.

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