What options does Israel have left in Syria?

Time is moving fast in Syria. Terrible things are being destroyed; but new terrible things are emerging before our eyes to fill the space the old ones have left.

Our passivity has ensured that the new evils would proceed to fill that space. It is happening before our eyes.

The question we have to face today is what could Israel or America still do to give much chance for a better outcome than the one emerging. Can we put aside our passivity? Can we do anything at this point?

What was possible a week ago, or even yesterday, is no longer possible today. That is how fast we have to be.

It is too late for the Assad regime in Damascus to save itself by aligning with Israel, as it half-offered a week ago.

Is the regime doomed altogether? Probably yes, except in a small Alawite enclave with a Russian base.

Is it too late to carve out an Israeli protectorate around Damascus, with a connecting corridor to Israel’s Golan Heights? As of this time of writing, this might still be possible.

The UN, in keeping with its habits, is calling for a diplomatic-political negotiation for a transitional government. This is on paper a good option – if it really were an option under the circumstances of a takeover by Sunni Islamist militant forces.

Yes, the negotiations could take place under Islamist rule; but the consequences would be different than the advertised intentions. This method has been tried often in Afghanistan, in all the decades since Islamist forces had toppled the secular leftist regime there; and has never worked well. The story in Libya for the last decade has been pretty much the same.

What may still be possible would be for the IDF to cut out a corridor, extending from the Golan Heights to Damascus. It would have to cut through the rebel forces surrounding Damascus; there could be real bloodshed. Still, Israel has the power to do it.

In that case, the Israeli presence would make it possible for a UN-style process – negotiations to set up a moderate compromise regime – to work tolerably well in Damascus, not as capital of Syria but as capital of a statelet. The relative reliability of the process in this scenario would be based on the fact that, unlike the pure neutral UN processes alone, it would be under an Israeli protectorate. The Israeli national security interest would provide the constancy that could make this work.

Elsewhere in Syria, the situation is even messier.

US should continue to support the Kurds, who hold a large autonomous area in Northern Syria. It should continue protecting them, no longer against Assad but now against Turkey and the Islamists.

A major negative is the one place where the Assad regime might survive. That is the Alawi enclave, located in the strip of Syria north of Lebanon. Since a Russian naval base is there, the regime would become a Russian protectorate.

Given what Russia has become, this is a problem for both America and Israel. Russia would want to ensure that Iran could continue to funnel weapons through there to Hezbollah in Syria.

Erdogan has meanwhile carved out areas nearby in northern Syria for Turkish domination. He would play his usual game with Putin as power-broker. Turkey and Russia would divide up influence in northwestern Syria — and cut out the West. Turkey’s presence, the rebel faction that it has been supporting, and Turkey’s ideological connection to Islamism – all this would reinforce Turkey’s influence on the Islamists who are taking over the remainder of Syria.

This is all bad news. In face of it, there are two opposite options, which we may call the Biden-Blinken and the Israel-Trump options.

The Biden-Blinken policy is hands off: just let it be so, just talk about human rights and diplomacy. The Israel-Trump option is, or rather could be, for Trump to act as the incoming power broker, as he is doing elsewhere. Trump and Israel would broker some kind of deal with Russia and Turkey. Israel and America would want to keep Hezbollah cut off from Russian-Iranian resupply, and to keep Turkey out of the American-backed, Kurdish- and SDF-controlled area in Syria. It would not be easy to get agreement on such a deal, but Trump, like Israel, knows how to be tough.

In the case of such a deal, the Kurdish-SDF area, together with the residual American military presence, the Israeli corridor and protectorate around Damascus, and the Russian dislike of Sunni Islamism, would provide a basis for some degree of continuing influence and restraint on the emerging Islamist regime in the rest of Syria.

Is this still feasible? Is the main part of it, the Damascus protectorate and the Israeli corridor to it, still possible?

As of the moment I am writing, probably yes. But time is moving fast. In the last week, possibilities have been disappearing in a matter of days; in the last two days, in a matter of hours.

The IDF and Mossad should be doing their rapid calculations on the viability of such a policy and advising the government accordingly.