Israel bombs the Abu al-Duhur base to tell Erdogan: get out of Syria

At first light on Tuesday, Israeli forces carried out eight separate air strikes on an airbase in north-western Syria, at Abu al-Duhur, some sixty kilometres from the Turkish border. The raids caused no casualties, but the runway and hangars were damaged. Inside were a couple of old Su-22 fighter jets inherited from the Assad regime, some MiG training aircraft and a few helicopters. As is its custom, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the raids, but US Ambassador Tom Barack, the White House’s special envoy to Syria, described it as a “confirmed Israeli attack”. “Al Sharaa has not maintained any proxy forces. On the contrary, he has repeatedly expressed a preference for de-escalation with Israel,” wrote the diplomat, condemning the offensive. Barrack’s implicit reference to “proxy forces” is to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, the true recipient of the message that Israel sought to convey with the attack on Abu al-Duhur: we will not tolerate Syria acquiring a new arsenal of weapons, let alone an air force. Fox News spoke to an anonymous Israeli intelligence official who, as well as reporting that the Americans had in fact been informed of the attack in advance, confirmed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s concerns: “Al Sharaa cannot act as the old Syrian regime did, which maintained proxy forces”. Whilst the Jewish state previously feared the Shia axis comprising Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah and the Iranians, it is now said to be concerned about a new Sunni axis between al-Sharaa and Erdogan – an alliance no less feared by Jerusalem, given Ankara’s support for Hamas in recent years.

Today, there are dozens of military bases scattered across Syria, built during the civil war and housing a substantial contingent of several thousand Turkish troops. The Abu al-Duhur base is partially inactive, but for several months the Turks had been carrying out extensive maintenance work on the runway and hangars. A few hours before the Israeli attack, a delegation from Ankara had visited the base to check on the progress of the work. The choice of target appears to have been carefully considered by Israel, which deliberately decided to strike a base that was not yet fully operational rather than, for example, the one at Taftanaz – which, although just 30 kilometres from Abu al Duhur, is far more important from an operational point of view and hosts a large contingent of Turkish soldiers. “Israeli military operations in Syria over the past two weeks have been the most aggressive and intense in the last 10 months. Twenty-seven direct attacks, including air raids, artillery fire and heavy machine-gun fire, 36 ground incursions, and 11 civilians arrested,” noted Charles Lister, one of the Middle East Institute’s leading experts on Syria, in X. 

With Monday’s attack, Israel sought to make it clear that when it speaks of demilitarising Syria, it is not referring solely to the south – between Quneitra, Daraa and Suwayda – where IDF ground incursions are a daily occurrence and no longer make the news – but on Tuesday in Hosh al Shahar, north of Quneitra, a section of forest was destroyed, whilst another ground operation targeted Tel Bayt al Warda, in the Damascus countryside. Rather, the Jewish state intends to prevent the Turks from arming Syrians in any region of the country, right up to the north. Israel had not launched a raid against a Turkish base in Syria since April last year, when it struck the T4 base near Homs. Since then, the Americans had managed to broker talks between Netanyahu and Erdogan, though these do not appear to be yielding the results the White House had hoped for. Whilst the Arab press speculates on the ‘Syrian card’ played by Netanyahu in an attempt to win votes ahead of October’s elections in Israel, directly threatening Turkey risks turning into a high-stakes game for the Prime Minister. Erdogan is not Khamenei, but a close ally of the United States, as well as a member of NATO. Like Israel, he too has borders with Syria that need securing, and it will be difficult to persuade him to withdraw from the country. Even less so with the approval of this US administration.