Yes, but they didn’t need to do that before, now they aren’t so certain.
Before Bashar’s indefinite vacation they just flew by and bombed whatever they though needed bombing and Bashar would just bank the right to respond, instead of actually responding or using the air defenses to stop the bombing in the first place.
They never needed to bomb Syria since Bashar took care of that. Plus his barrels had shrapnel and metal nails to cause as much bodily harm as possible to “his people”.
If they needed to get someone out of Syria and into some interrogation room they would just cross the border and grab him out of his house, just load him up and drive away.
I don’t think there are many things done to Gaza today that Bashar didn’t do to Douma, Daria, Allepo, Dar’a, Hama, Idlib, Homs, and Raqaa 10+ years ago.
Now Syria has some stability, the de facto government isn’t driving a wedge between each Syrian and their neighbor based on religion and race to keep Syrians in fear of each other, and they are actually working to improve peoples’ lives.
Before Israel could not do that. It is not like they did not want to. Greater Israel has always included Syria.
If they wanted to, they could’ve destroyed all the weapons, defenses, and bases while Bashar was destroying infrastructure and homes. As for a land invasion, lets not pretend that HTS’ take over was more than them marching forward and replacing flags. No one would have fought for Bashar if Israel with air support and advanced weaponry were to start an invasion.
Israel bombed Gaza and went in, then did the same for Lebanon, and was inevitably gonna enter Syria. It just wasn’t in a rush to do so, the regime had already turned the country into rubble for them and was massacring Syrians city by city. It wouldn’t have been in Israel’s best interest to leave their regime exposed with no air defense or artillery.
Just for the record I don’t believe that HTS or the next Syrian government will keep up this feud with Israel, they’re an actual government that’s trying to build a country. It has been clear for quite some time now that the regime is not interested in the “Axis of resistance” and whatever they were planing, but they really needed the Russian and Iranian support so they stayed as a part of the resistance on paper. Now it’s gonna be official: No one is coming to get the Golan heights back, and no one has the power to help the Palestinians.
Assad would have fought back against his military getting destroyed. HTS is not doing anything.
Assad did not directly attack Israel. He was transporting weapons for Iran to Hezbollah.
For now we shall see. It is possible HTS will resist Israel but looking less and less likely.
