Israel's incursion into Syria halted on edge of occupied Golan Heights

Ahmad Al Shara and his HTS group will deal with Israel after transitional government is formed, sources tell The National

People walk near a military vehicle at Quneitra crossing which connects the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, as seen from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, December 10, 2024. REUTERS

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The Israeli ground incursion into Syria appeared to have stopped on Tuesday at a constellation of villages on the edge of a militarised zone near the occupied Golan Heights, while Israeli airstrikes in Damascus also stopped.

Rebel sources say that Israeli forces made an incursion of the zone until they reached the town of Khan Arnabeh, 25 kilometres south-west of Damascus. A US brokered deal resulted in the zone in 1974, a year after President Hafez Al Assad launched a failed war to re-capture the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1973.

In Damascus, there have been no reports of new Israeli raids since dawn. The capital has been under Israeli air strikes on compounds belonging to the de facto defunct Syrian army for the last 48 hours. How Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), might respond to the Israeli land grabs remains to be seen.

Leader of the militant group and Syria’s de facto leader Ahmad Al Shara, formerly known as Abu Mohammed Al Jawlani, "is focused on the political transition for now," said a former dissident in direct contact with him. "He will deal with Israel later."

Mr Al Shara , the head of an offshoot of Al Qaeda with channels to Turkey that deposed long-time dictator Bashar Al Assad on Sunday, is said to be considering cabinet positions for a transitional government after naming a new prime minister on Monday, sources have told The National.

He has moved to restore services in the country as he considers choosing ministers in a new cabinet of loyalists, with little connection to the traditional political opposition to the old regime, they said. He met Mohammad Al Jalali, the prime minister of the deposed government, on Monday to co-ordinate bringing back technocrats to work and get essential services up and running.

"He received a briefing on stocks of commodities and fuel," a source told The National. "The priority is also to bring the police on to the streets and the electricity technicians to operate the grid."

Mr Al Shara has "high administrative expertise" at his disposal but will "make use" of the cadres in the defunct Al Assad government, according to excerpts from the meeting. The source said that although Mr Al Shara has designated Mohammed Al Bashir, one of his loyalists, Prime Minister of the new government, it will take several days for the ministerial posts to become official.

The new cabinet is not expected to contain any significant number of members of the main political opposition organisation, formed in 2012 with Arab and western support but riddled with divisions since.

Mr Al Shara "is not returning our calls", said a member of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, a group based in Istanbul.

Mr Al Shara is pressing on with the consolidation of power as Israel mounts intensive raids that have destroyed much of the Syrian army's abandoned military hardware. Israeli troops grabbed a long-established buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights near Damascus, with some countries in the region now fearing yet more chaos.

Mr Al Assad's ousting by HTS after a 12-day blitz through Syria's urban heartland marked the end of the country's 13-year civil war, which started in late 2011, months after the dictator's loyalists used deadly force to crush a pro-democracy protest movement.

It is changing the dynamics of the Middle East after a decade of expansion by Russia and Iran, ideological enemies of Mr Al Shara's Sunni group, which is on the US terrorism list.

In the past several weeks, Mr Al Shara has started using his real name, instead of nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al Jawlani.

The US State Department has said that based on HTS's actions in Syria, there could be "a change in our sanctions posture".