Syria was never a nation-state, and repeating the word will not make it one. Treating "Syria" as a strategy is a category error that produces bloodshed, displacement, and instability. In Damascus, a post-Assad regime with jihadist roots seeks recognition while governing through coercion, prioritising the optics of statehood over its substance. The uniforms may be new; the methods are not.
The events of the past days expose the contradiction.
On January 9, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa arrived in Damascus, proclaimed a "new chapter", and announced a €620 million financial package for 2026–2027. Concurrently, Kurdish neighbourhoods in Aleppo came under fire: at least 23 were killed, Kurdish officials cited higher tolls, and more than 150,000 civilians fled the city's two Kurdish-held districts. Clashes spread toward Qamishli as government forces pushed beyond agreed lines, triggering clearances.
According to sources present at the Damascus meetings, al-Sharaa directed his security commanders and briefly paused talks amid the crackdown. While European leaders shook hands in Damascus and released funds without conditions, coercion was directed against Kurdish communities in the north. Violence now accelerates legitimacy. This is a false premise.
Syria is not a homogeneous society misruled, but a mosaic of peoples organised around autonomy and restraint. Sunni Arab populations differ sharply by region and lineage; Kurds dominate the north and northeast; Druze are rooted in the south and around Damascus; Alawites along the coastal mountains and mixed urban belts. Christians of multiple denominations – already withdrawing from public life – alongside Turkmen, Circassians, Ismailis, and others complete a landscape that has never conformed to centralised rule without fear. Hafez al-Assad imposed that fear. His successors are repeating the experiment.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the Kurdish case. Kurds number 2 to 2.5 million in Syria – its largest ethnic minority. Beyond Syria, they are a supranational nation of more than 30 million across Turkey, Iraq, and Iran: the world's largest people without a state. Their status is extraterritorial, a regional fault line.
In Aleppo and across the northeast, the new regime pairs force, displacement, and detention with selective concessions. On January 16, al-Sharaa announced citizenship and limited cultural rights, including recognition of Kurdish language use and Nowruz – long overdue, and reversible. Decreed rights can be revoked by decree, when dissent is met with armour and security raids. Paper inclusion under fire is not a settlement.
The Kurdish question is ungovernable inside borders that never integrated Kurds. It intersects with Turkey's internal conflict, Iraq's fragmented sovereignty, and Iran's upheaval; in both Iran and Syria, regimes under pressure impose old borders by force. Permanent Kurdish vulnerability destabilises.
A recognised Kurdish state – carved from existing states – would be contested. The alternative is continued repression across four countries, endless proxy wars, and recurrent mass violence; history offers no evidence the model can endure.
Israel stands alone in stating this openly: the only state to publicly support an independent Kurdish state, never retract that position, and institutionalise that commitment. This is not romanticism. Stable Kurdish entities are a barrier against jihadist relapse, Iranian expansion, and regional coercion – and a principle Israel understands well: minorities are not expendable currency for short-term quiet.
The pattern reaches beyond the Kurdish file. Christian communities – already withdrawing from public life after reported intimidation and sporadic attacks – understand what "recognition" means when enforcement is outsourced to armed actors. Smaller minorities, including Ismailis, are exposed to the same logic: assurances in Damascus, pressure on the ground. When a state demands legitimacy before it guarantees protection, minorities do not receive sovereignty; they receive terms.
The same principle applies to the Druze. Roughly one million live across the Levant, concentrated in southern Syria and bound by cross-border family ties. In Israel, Druze citizens are fully integrated, bearing equal obligations and serving alongside Jewish Israelis in major security campaigns – a foundational relationship. Israel's commitment therefore extends beyond the border. The violence in Sweida in mid-2025 demonstrated that sectarian breakdown follows state failure: when Druze security collapses, the credibility of governance in Damascus collapses with it. Any framework that fails to secure Druze communities is not an agreement, but structurally unsustainable.
The Alawite case presents an equally sharp moral test. Collective punishment for the Assad era is unjust and destabilising: many Alawites suffered under the regime, many were trapped by it, and many now face revenge dynamics they neither designed nor controlled. A system that cannot guarantee Alawite safety cannot claim reconciliation.
Western policy has responded by lowering standards. Sanctions were lifted in the name of reconstruction, but to facilitate refugee returns and expedience. Engagement with al-Sharaa now prioritises migration management over governance. This is not strategy. It is outsourcing risk to minorities for procedural calm.
Talk of a security arrangement between Israel and Syria rests on a false premise. While the United States presses forward and contacts take place, Jerusalem understands that no unitary Syrian actor exists that can deliver lasting stability. Israel does not view Ahmed al-Sharaa as a partner, has no interest in an agreement with him, and treats the notion of a "deal with Syria": participation manages risk, not intent. Coordination channels reduce friction, not conflict.
No framework will be recognised if it ignores Syria's constituent peoples – the Kurds, the Druze, and the Alawites. Media statements do not change this calculus. Jerusalem acts on realities, not cartography.
Those realities are decisive. Syria has realigned from a Russian-Iranian proxy to a Turkish one, concentrating risk rather than reducing it. Turkey is no longer a complication but the organising principle of post-Assad Syria, a shift already reflected in the Nagel Committee's planning for a potential Israel-Turkey confrontation. Israel's baseline is therefore explicit: no arrangement will stand while Turkey retains leverage in Damascus. Removing Turkish influence is a prerequisite, not a concession. As that condition is absent, the probability of a viable security agreement with Damascus is effectively zero.
History defines the baseline. In 1970 Israel stopped a Syrian armoured push into Jordan; Syria withdrew. That doctrine stands. Last August, the strike near Damascus's presidential palace reaffirmed Israel's ability to dismantle hostile governing structures within hours when Druze or Kurdish security is threatened – geography offers no immunity.
Jerusalem is not planning Syria's rehabilitation but the configuration that follows its fragmentation and the role in shaping it. There is no viable "Syria-first" doctrine: recognition cannot precede protection, the unitary Syria myth leads only to the next war, and Israel will not underwrite that illusion with its security, its moral commitments, or sacrificed lives. Syria was never one country.
Shay Gal is a strategic analyst in international politics, crisis management and strategic communications, working globally on geopolitics, power projection and public diplomacy, with a focus on their impact on state decision-making and strategic behaviour.
