Alwaght- Only a few hours after capture of Damascus by the armed opposition, Israel rushed to take advantage of the security vacuum caused by power transition and under the ruse of securing the borders of the occupied territories, it occupied large tracts of Syrian land beside fully destroying Syrian military infrastructure, to the extent that now the Israeli tanks are only 20 kilometers from the capital Damascus.
The Israelis that have shown when they occupy a territory they do not return it and annex it, this time, too, they have unveiled their evil plan for permanent occupation and annexation of Syrian territory to move one step closer to their long-held dream of "Nile to Euphrates Israel" despite regional opposition.
Meanwhile, although the armed groups that have taken the power in Damascus are just observing the events and have declared that they have no intention of confronting the Israeli occupation, history bears witness to the fact that the Syrian nation's record of reliance on resistance and hostility to the Zionist colonial project is as old as the history of the formation of the Israeli regime, and the Syrian nation's connection to the chain of resistance discourse does not break with the change of governments. On the contrary, this compromising and dependent view of the new rulers of Syria these days is like a passing cloud that is unable to conceal this historical reality of Syria for a long time.
The 70-year history full of struggle against occupation with which the Syrians identify themselves and are proud of as the forerunners of the Arab nationalism in support of Palestine is the element that has been passed to today from generations and set up a serious barrier ahead of Israeli implementation of expansionist plans.
Syria in Arab-Israeli dispute
Though under 54 years of Assad family rule, the country was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause and always defended the Palestinian interests in international organizations, Syria was a vital player in Palestine dispute even before rise to power of Assad family.
Syria has always been at war with the Israeli enemy for the past 76 years, and unlike some Arab compromisers who turned their backs to the Palestinian people and took the path of normalizing relations with the occupiers, Syria has never made compromises to the Israelis, and during this time it has always been one of Palestine's main allies.
In the initial decades of the Palestinian conflict, Syria, along with Egypt, incurred the greatest costs and casualties in supporting the Palestinians and participated in three wars against the Israeli regime.
Syria was one of the first countries to raise the flag of struggle against Tel Aviv as soon as Israeli regime was established in May 1948. Along with other Arab countries, it opposed the establishment of Israel and declared its full support for Palestine. It sent its forces to fight the newly established Israeli army, but it was unsuccessful in retaking the occupied territories. In this war, Syria entered the occupied territories from Golan with 2,000 troops and opened the northeastern front of the war against Israel.
Damascus also played a role in the six-day war of 1967, hopping to make gains against Israel. Before the six-day war, Syria trained Palestinian fighters who when the Israelis destroyed Palestinian homes for settlement projects, they carried out retaliatory attacks.
Syria even formed "Arab Republic" coalition with Egypt in order to strengthen the Arab alliance against the Israeli hostility. The coalition asserted an Israeli attack on either country was considered an attack on the other.
This alliance played an important role in supporting Palestine during the six-day war, and Syria had deployed about 75,000 troops on the border of the occupied territories to strike at the occupying enemy in a coordinated action with Egypt, but the outcome did not go as the Arab alliance had predicted.
Although the Arabs were defeated in these wars, the position of the Arab countries, especially Syria, showed that the Arab nations are with the Palestinian people and will never leave them alone against the Zionists. Israel occupied a large part of the Golan Heights in the six-day war in 1967.
An important point in the 1967 war was the occupation of the Golan Heights by the Israeli army, which remains occupied to date though it is recognized by the international community as part of Syrian territory. Although Syria tried to take the Golan Heights back from Israel in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israeli forces maintained the region with difficulty and despite heavy casualties.
Syria's strict anti-Israeli stance continued even when Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat in 1979 raised a white flag and signed normalization deal with Israel. Actually, Syria remained a serious obstacle ahead of realization of an active Israeli-Western project to bury the Palestinian cause, something putting Damascus at the center of plots hatched by the enemies of the Resistance camp.
The former head of the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, between 1991 and 1995 said the Mossad continuously recruited agents and forces from the Syrian army and government under false identities to carry out its numerous missions in Syria. In addition, the Israeli spy agency had also collected information about the Syrian defense system."
Over these years, Syria has managed to capture some of these spies. The most prominent of them is Eli Cohen, who returned to Syria in the early 1960s disguised as a businessman who wanted to return home after years of living in South America. He was incredibly successful in reaching the highest levels of security in Syria, but intelligence forces eventually discovered his identity and thwarted Tel Aviv's first serious attempt to penetrate deep into Syria.
Additionally, in the 1960s and 1970s, Syria had limited border conflicts with the Israelis due to its commony border with the occupied territories, and Tel Aviv leaders at the time always accused Damascus of attacking Israeli farmers and preventing settlers from engaging in agricultural activities.
Syria hosting of Palestinian refugees
In addition to direct military engagement against Israel, Syria took humanitarian measures in support of the Palestinians. In 1969, Syria opened Palestinian embassy and engaged in diplomatic relations with Palestinian groups in a bid to create regional legitimacy for Palestinians in the face of the Israelis.
Since millions of Palestinians were displaced from their homes as a result of the crimes of the occupation forces, Syria tried in the early years to resettle some of these refugees in its territory in order to mitigate part of their suffering.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government at the time established a camp for Palestinian refugees called the "Yarmouk Camp" in the vicinity of Damascus in 1957, and thousands of Palestinians were resettled there. The Syrian government handed over control of this area to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In addition to Yarmouk, other camps hosting displaced Palestinians are established in Syria, including Hems, Al-Thabinah, Latakia, Jermana, and Borij, accommodating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. Therefore, Syria hosted the largest number of Palestinian refugees after Jordan in the first two decades of the establishment of the Israeli regime, and for this reason it has always been popular among the Palestinians.
The Israeli regime's massive invasion of Syria post-Assad with the aim of destroying strategic capabilities and infrastructure and Netanyahu's revocation of the buffer zone agreement with Syria are factors that strengthen the anti-Israeli sentiments of Syrians, Arabs and Muslims, and the Syrian people will certainly not tolerate it, and as soon as stability and peace return to this country, the fight against the occupiers will be prioritized.
