Israeli troops move into Syria, as the Syrian military forces desert their posts following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government. CGTN’s Jonathan Regev reports from Tel Aviv.
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00:00Always a concern, Paul, simply because I think the situation in Syria for Israel and for everyone else is unknown.
00:07Do we really know what Syria will look like? Do we really know who is going to govern there?
00:12The answer is no, and therefore anything is possible.
00:15Israel decided not to wait for anything coming in Syria and take some preemptive measures, being proactive.
00:22We're seeing it in the buffer zone. The buffer zone is on the border between the two countries
00:29and Israeli forces are operating in the buffer zone, but they're not crossing into Syria.
00:34The buffer zone was established some 50 years ago after the Yom Kippur War.
00:40It was established in May of 1974, and this is an area on which both armies,
00:46the Israeli army and the Syrian army, cannot operate there, only UN peacekeepers.
00:51But Israel is now saying that this agreement, the separation of powers, as it is known,
00:57is no longer in force simply because the Syrian army is no longer there,
01:01and you don't really know who is the one calling the shots in Syria.
01:05Therefore Israel decided that it will act in the buffer zone but not cross into Syria.
01:11And yes, we know how these things begin. We never know how they end.
01:16Does Israel know exactly who is going to be the next door neighbor?
01:19The answer is no. There are some indirect negotiations through the Druze community in Israel and in Syria,
01:26through other intelligence forces in the area, but there's a lot of uncertainty,
01:32and uncertainty is something that Israel wants to be prepared for because you never know what may happen tomorrow.
01:37Indeed, a huge amount of uncertainty and a picture really shifting in the region.
01:42What else is Israel saying about its strategy in Syria?
01:48The strategy is not to wait for things in Syria, not to allow the other side to dictate the events,
01:55but to be proactive. Israel learned a very difficult lesson from the way that it acted in Gaza and in Lebanon,
02:04always reacting to what Hamas did, to what Hezbollah did, instead of taking actions by itself.
02:10This time around Israel is acting before anything is happening.
02:14That is why, as we mentioned, the forces are acting in the buffer zone.
02:18That is why Israel did not wait a very long time, and as soon as it was clear that the Assad regime was collapsing,
02:26Israel took the very strategic Syrian summit over Mount Hermon, a high point overlooking the entire region,
02:34and Israel is being prepared for anything that might happen.
02:37A lot of forces have been deployed to the northeastern border on the Golan Heights with Syria.
02:43Israel, after the lessons learned in Lebanon and in Gaza, understands that it has to take actions first,
02:48be proactive, and not wait for something to happen on the other side before acting itself.