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Syria Syrian-Israeli Hostility
Support for Greater Syria, opposition to Jewish settlement in
Palestine, and the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which Britain
promised Jews a "national home" in Palestine (as part of the
World War I promises to the Arabs and Jews), contributed to the
growth of pan-Arabism as well as to the opposition to recognizing
Israel as a legitimate Middle Eastern nation
(see World War II and Independence
, ch. 1). The November 1947 United Nations (UN)
declaration calling for partition of Palestine into Jewish and
Arab states provoked a general strike in Damascus and major
rioting throughout Syria. In addition, armed bands of irregulars
from Syria's fledgling armed forces began to raid Jewish
settlements near the Syrian border.
In February 1948, Syria signed the League of Arab States'
(Arab League) political and military alliance, under which King
Abdullah of Transjordan was appointed commander in chief of the
invading armies. On May 16, 1948, one day after the declaration
of Israeli independence, Syrian armed forces, as part of the Arab
forces, attacked Israel near Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) from
the Golan Heights. Syria's leaders, as well as the leaders of
other Arab League states that simultaneously invaded Israel,
expected a swift Arab victory. The Syrian forces numbered 8,000
troops, in two infantry brigades with a mechanized battalion of
French-built tanks, and a small air force. Although General Taha
al Hashimi of Iraq was the figurehead leader of the Arab
Liberation Army, its real leader was a former Syrian officer of
the Ottoman Turkish Army, Fawzi al Kaukji (who had been a leader
of the Arab irregulars during the 1936 revolt in Palestine and
had led the Arab guerrilla forces based around Nablus). Arab
forces were equipped with modern weapons (such as tanks, armored
cars, artillery, and aircraft support) and trained by European
instructors attached to Transjordan's Arab Legion, but they
lacked an effective central command. The Israeli forces, on the
other hand, became a coordinated fighting force under their
outstanding and committed leadership.
By October 31, following its defeat, Syria's war along
Israel's northern borders had ended, although the war continued
along Israel's southern front. The Arab forces were stunned by
the effective Israeli resistance and the incompetence of the Arab
armies, both factors having become apparent after only ten days'
fighting. By June 11, when the United Nations imposed a truce,
the Syrians had been pushed back across their frontier in all but
two small border areas. Sporadic fighting continued, however,
until the Syrian-Israeli armistice agreement, signed on July 20,
1949.
Although Syria lost no territory in its first confrontation
with Israel, the war had a profound effect on the newly
independent nation. Revelations of corruption and profiteering
and the incompetence of Syria's civilian political leaders were
seized upon by military officers as an excuse for Syria's debacle
in the war. In addition, the presence in Syria of around 100,000
Palestinian Arabs who had fled Israel during and after the war
compounded the country's economic and social problems and
initiated what would remain, four decades later, one of the
central exacerbating issues in the Middle East and the Arab-
Israeli conflict.
Political and economic discontent led to widespread rioting.
On March 30, 1949, Colonel Husni az Zaim, commander in chief of
the army, led the first of many Syrian coups d'état to restore
political order and the supremacy of the armed forces. Such coups
would punctuate Syrian politics for over two decades
(see Coups and Countercoups, 1961-70
, ch. 1).
The 1949 Syrian-Israeli armistice agreement contained
numerous clauses that were interpreted differently by Israel and
Syria, leading to ambiguities over such issues as administrative
rights within the demilitarized zone that had been created from
areas evacuated by the Syrian army in 1949, fishing rights in
Lake Tiberias, and access to the waters of the Jordan River.
These and other issues were constant sources of tension between
the two countries, leading to localized exchanges of artillery
and rocket fire, which escalated on December 11, 1955, into an
Israeli raid on Syrian forces in which fifty Syrian troops were
killed. Syria did not fight in the 1956 Sinai campaign, although
it was a member of the Unified Military Command established in
October 1956 among Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel's victory in
that war intensified Syria's determination to confront Israel
militarily, and was a factor in establishing the Syrian-Egyptian
union of 1958-61. The stationing of the United Nations Emergency
Force (UNEF) in Gaza and Sharm ash Shaykh following Israel's
withdrawal in 1957 meant that the Syrian-Israeli front now became
the most important source of confrontation between the Arab
states and Israel, leading to armed skirmishes, such as the
Tawafiq raid by Israel of February 1, 1960.
On May 17,1967, Egyptian President Nasser forced the United
Nations Emergency Force to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and
the Gaza Strip, where it had been engaged in peacekeeping
functions since the 1956 Sinai War. Then, on May 22, Egypt
announced a blockade against Israeli shipping in the Strait of
Tiran (at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula). Contingents
arrived in Syria from other Arab countries, including Kuwait and
Algeria, and Israel was soon surrounded by an Arab force of
250,000 troops, over 2,000 tanks and some 700 fighter and bomber
aircraft. Strategically, Israel faced a military offensive on its
border with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
Against this background of mobilization, Israeli leaders
began planning a preemptive strike against the Arabs. The attack
came on the morning of June 5 as the Israeli Air Force bombed
military airfields and engaged in aerial battles with Egypt,
Jordan, and Syria. In the fight, Syria lost thirty-two MiG-21,
twenty-three MiG-15 and MiG-17 fighters, and two Ilyushin II-28
bombers--two-thirds of its total air inventory. To Egyptian
dismay, no major move of Syrian ground forces occurred, although
Syrian cooperation had been a major consideration in Egypt's
mobilization and deployment in the Sinai. Although it issued
belligerent communiques, the Syrian leadership's behavior was
very restrained. At the beginning of the war, the Syrian Air
Force mounted an attack against Israeli oil refineries in Haifa,
but the Israeli Air Force retaliated and destroyed the bulk of
what remained of Syria's aircraft. Syrian artillery kept up a
steady bombardment of the Israeli forces in eastern Galilee,
while the rest of the Israeli forces were deployed along the
Egyptian and Jordanian fronts. Despite Jordanian pleas for
reinforcements, no Syrian troops had been deployed in Jordan by
the end of the war.
After defeating the Egyptian and Jordanian armies, Israel
turned to the Syrian front to end Syrian harassment of Israeli
border settlements from the Golan Heights. The Israeli Northern
Command attack came on June 9 in an armored and infantry assault
following Israeli Air Force strikes that systematically reduced
Syrian forward positions. On June 10, the Syrian forces
collapsed, and, despite their previous geographic and tactical
advantages, fled, abandoning tanks. After about thirty hours of
fighting, the Israeli armed forces occupied about 1,150 square
kilometers of Syrian territory on the Golan Heights. An estimated
2,500 Syrian troops were killed, and around 100,000 civilians
uprooted from their homes in the Golan during and after the
hostilities.
The Syrian armed forces' poor showing in 1967 has been
attributed to negligence, lack of overall coordination, and poor
high-level command. Observers considered the failure the result
of Syria's twenty-year military tradition of politicization at
the expense of professionalization.
The 1967 defeat also led to increased support for irregular
Palestinian guerrilla forces that, in 1964, had been formally
united under the banner of the PLO. Syria was the major Arab
supporter of the PLO immediately after the June 1967 War,
although this relationship was often marked by violent conflict
and upheaval. Syria formed As Saiqa (Thunderbolt), theoretically
a guerrilla unit under the aegis of the PLO, but aligned
politically with the Syrian Baath Party and manned largely by
Palestinian volunteers from the Syrian Army
(see Special and Irregular Armed Forces
, this ch.).
Between 1968 and 1970, the PLO operated against Israel from
Jordanian territory, on occasion supported by Jordanian units.
Israel conducted some major reprisals, notably the Karameh
Operation of March 21, 1968. The PLO created a virtual "state
within a state" in Jordan, even organizing an assassination
attempt against King Hussein, whose regime felt increasingly
threatened by the PLO's activity. In response, Hussein launched
an all-out attack on PLO forces in August and September 1970. The
latter, "Black September," was a bloody eleven-day civil war
between Jordanian troops and PLO commandos backed by Syrian
armored units which invaded Jordan. As the Syrian invasion
developed and the Jordanian army strove to resist it, Syria and
the Soviet Union received unequivocal indications that neither
the United States nor Israel would view with equanimity a Syrian
invasion of Jordan. Israeli mobilization and American troop,
fleet, and air activities led the Soviets to advise the Syrians
to pull back. The Syrian invasion of Jordan also caused political
strife within Syria. Two months later, Minister of Defense
General Hafiz al Assad, who had strongly opposed Syrian
involvement in Jordan, assumed the presidency of Syria in a
bloodless coup d'état.
Clashes between PLO units and the Jordanian Army continued
throughout 1971, but most of the surviving PLO fighters left
Jordan for Syria. Syria's new leadership supported the goal of
"the restoration of the national and legal rights of Palestinian
Arabs," but was ambivalent about the presence of the potentially
subversive Palestinians and placed severe restrictions on their
activities. As a result, the majority moved to Lebanon.
Another major foreign policy goal was the recovery of Syrian
territory on the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967 and
annexed in 1981
(see Foreign Policy
, ch. 4). The October 1973 War
(known in the Arab world as the Ramadan War and in Israel as the
Yom Kippur War) was principally a result of Syria's pursuit of
this second goal, which coincided with Egypt's desire to recover
the Suez Canal, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip, also
taken by Israel in 1967. Other intricacies of Arab politics,
including President Assad's desire to end Syria's traditional
isolation in the Arab world (and ultimately to attain regional
hegemony), also played a part. The International Institute for
Strategic Studies, noting the wave of riots by workers and
students in Egypt in 1972 and 1973 and Sunni Muslim protests in
Syria in early 1973, argued that "The very [political] weakness
of Sadat and Assad were important factors in the decision to
launch war on Israel."
By 1973 Syria's post-1967 effort to increase the
professionalism of its armed forces, largely through the aid of
the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, had borne fruit. Syrian
military leaders felt self-confident and believed that their
superpower ally would lend considerable weight in the event of
renewed war with Israel. From mid-1973 until the beginning of
hostilities, Arab leaders met frequently to plan the coordinated
offensive, and Syrian and Egyptian army units began massing along
their respective borders during the last days of September.
However, Israeli intelligence, military and political officials
misinterpreted these deployments. When the Syrian-Egyptian
offensive was launched on October 6, at 2 p.m. on Yom Kippur,
Judaism's holiest day, 5 Syrian divisions, consisting of some
45,000 men, moved against only 2 Israeli armored brigades of
about 4,500 men stationed on the Golan Heights.
The timing, no doubt deliberate on Syria's part, in fact had
a different effect than intended. Because most Israelis were
either at their synagogues or at home, the roads were clear, and
troops could be rushed to the border. Nevertheless, for some
twenty-three hours, Syrian forces held the offensive, almost
reaching the encampment overlooking the Jordan River Valley at
the southern edge of the Golan Heights region, but making little
headway beyond the 1967 cease-fire line in the north. About 1,800
Moroccan troops held the peak of strategic Mount Hermon near the
common Syrian, Israeli, and Lebanese border. In the central
region, Syria recaptured Al Qunaytirah. But reinforced Israeli
troops launched successful counterattacks on October 8 and 9 and
had pushed Syrian troops back behind the 1967 lines by October
10. Two Iraqi mechanized divisions, a Jordanian armored brigade,
and a Saudi Arabian detachment had joined the Syrian offensive
line east of Sasa, less than forty kilometers from Damascus, by
October 14. To its credit, this Arab defense line held for three
days of fierce fighting.
During the war Syria deployed vast numbers of Soviet-made
surface-to-surface missiles. Between October 7 and 9, several of
these hit populated areas in northern Israel. As the Israeli
ground forces advanced into Syria, the Israeli Air Force
destroyed part of the Syrian missile system, vital oil
installations, power plants, bridges, and port facilities at
Tartus, Baniyas, and Latakia.
Syria finally accepted the United Nations cease-fire on
October 24, but sporadic fighting continued on the Golan until
the disengagement agreement of March 31, 1974. In all, the war
was extremely costly to Syria. An estimated 7,000 troops were
killed and 21,000 wounded, and 600 tanks, 165 fighter aircraft,
and 7 naval vessels were destroyed or lost. An additional 845
square kilometers of territory was lost, and much vital economic
infrastructure was destroyed.
Syria, however, counted several victories. First, Syria's six
years of struggle to professionalize the armed forces paid off
when Syrian forces revealed great improvement in battle. In
addition, Soviet airlifts and sealifts of military equipment
during the hostilities demonstrated the importance of Syria's
military relationship with the Soviet Union
(see Foreign Influence
, this ch.). Also, for the first time in the twenty-
five-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict, there had been effective
coordination of Arab armies. Finally, under the terms of the
disengagement agreement, Israel withdrew from all freshly
captured territory and also from a narrow strip of territory,
held since 1967 and including Al Qunaytirah, which was
incorporated into a demilitarized zone policed by the 1,200-man
United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF).
Syria's next engagement with Israel was an outgrowth of its
aspirations toward regional hegemony, especially with regard to
Lebanon. On June 6, 1982, Israel launched Operation "Peace for
Galilee," a campaign intended to establish a security zone north
of the Lebanese border, a distance of some forty kilometers that
would be free of hostile Palestinian and Shia elements. However,
this official intention was soon transformed into an overarching
strategic plan for a three-pronged attack: one along the coastal
plain to destroy the PLO military infrastructure; a central
advance to reach the Damascus-Beirut road and establish a
presence there; and, a third to turn eastward along the Damascus-
Beirut road and cause the Syrian forces in the Biqa Valley to
withdraw toward the Syrian border, thereby removing the Syrian
military presence in Lebanon.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon was prompted by a number of
elements. First, the Lebanese Christian Phalangists had appealed
to Israel for help following the escalation in fighting between
the Syrian Army and Phalangist units, placing the mostly Greek
Orthodox enclave in Zahlah in the Biqa Valley and the Phalangist-
controlled port of Juniyah, north of Beirut, in danger of being
overrun by the Syrian Army. Then, both Israel and Syria violated
tacit agreements concerning Lebanese air space. Syria placed
surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries in the Biqa Valley, thus
hampering regular Israeli reconnaissance flights over Lebanese
territory, flights to which Syria previously had acquiesced. In
addition, Israeli and PLO clashes intensified with PLO long-range
shelling of Israeli border towns and heavy Israeli retaliation
against PLO concentrations in Lebanon. Finally, on June 3,
members of the Abu Nidal group, a Palestinian terrorist
organization, attempted to assassinate Israeli Ambassador to
Britain Shlomo Argov.
One of the most significant military events of the conflict
was the Israeli aerial attack against the Syrian surface-to-air
missiles, resulting in the destruction of nineteen sites and the
damaging of four. Israeli aerial mastery was confirmed in the
skies over the Biqa Valley. At the conclusion of the first week
of the war, after the participation of approximately 100 combat
planes on each side, a total of 86 Syrian MiG-21, MiG-23, and
Sukhoi-22 aircraft had been shot down with no Israeli losses. At
the end of the battle, Israel had lost two helicopters and an A-4
Skyhawk, which was shot down by PLO missile fire.
There were also armor battles with the Syrians in the central
and eastern sectors, around Jazzin and Ayn Darah, the latter of
which commands the Damascus-Beirut highway, and stretching into
the Biqa Valley. The Syrian armored divisions, with a strength of
about 700 tanks, were equipped with the Soviet-made T-72 tanks,
the most modern in the Syrian arsenal. Fighting effectively to
prevent the Israeli forces from reaching the Damascus-Beirut
highway, the Syrians also used heavy concentrations of antitank
weapons manned by special commando units. In other battles,
Israeli forces advanced into the vicinity of Beirut, moving
beyond the original terms of reference laid down by the Israeli
cabinet. Under the direction of Ariel Sharon, the controversial
minister of defense, Israeli forces moved into West Beirut,
attacking from land and sea, and laid siege to the Palestinian
fighters.
By mid-July 1982, through the mediation of United States
Ambassador Philip Habib, negotiations involving Syria, Israel,
Lebanon, and the PLO led to the evacuation of some 8,000 PLO
fighters and remnants of the Syrian 85th Brigade, under the
supervision of a Multinational Force composed of United States
Marines, French, and Italian troops. PLO personnel were evacuated
by sea to eight Arab countries; the Syrian forces were evacuated
by land along the Beirut-Damascus highway to the Biqa Valley in
eastern Lebanon.
Following the assassination of Lebanese President-elect
Bashir Jumayyil (also Gemayel) on September 14, 1982, Israeli
forces once again entered West Beirut, with the declared
intention of preventing an outbreak of sectarian strife. However,
it was under Israeli coordination that on September 15, the
Lebanese Phalangist forces entered the two Palestinian refugee
camps in Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut and massacred
Palestinian civilians. The Israeli forces withdrew from Beirut on
September 3, 1983, and redeployed along a new line along the
Awali River. This redeployment followed the breakdown of the May
17, 1983, Lebanon-Israel Agreement and the handing over of Beirut
to the Lebanese forces and troops of the 3,000 strong
Multinational Force. Lebanon's abrogation of the agreement under
Syrian pressure was considered a major victory for Assad in his
quest for regional hegemony.
Israel initially refused to withdraw its troops from southern
Lebanon unless arrangements were also made for the withdrawal of
Syrian and PLO forces. However, the high human and material cost
of deployment in Lebanon, as well as adverse international and
domestic public opinion, were major factors in Israel's decision
to withdraw most of its forces from southern Lebanon in June
1985, although the Christian forces of Antoine Lahad's pro-
Israeli South Lebanon Army (SLA) remained.
By May 1983, Syrian materiel losses amounted to 350 to 400
tanks, 86 combat aircraft, 5 helicopters and 19 surface-to-air
missile batteries; human casualties totaled around 370 killed,
1,000 wounded, and 250 prisoners of war. Israeli losses,
meanwhile, amounted to about 50 tanks; Israel's casualties in the
overall war in Lebanon reached about 480 killed, 2,600 wounded,
and 11 prisoners.
The 1982 Lebanon War represented a number of milestones in
military warfare. For example, the new Soviet T-72 tank was
battle tested against US-equipped advanced Israeli armor. Also,
Israel used new forms of battlefield intelligence (including
electronic countermeasures), made effective use of reconnaissance
drones, and demonstrated air superiority. The air battles over
the Biqa Valley--one of the major aerial battles in modern
history--involved a confrontation between two highly
sophisticated electronic command, control, and communications
systems, not just between aircraft and missiles. On the ground
the Syrian Army fought well, and there was effective coordination
between armor units and antitank commando units. Observers felt
that the weakness of the Syrian Army was an inflexibility in
maneuver at the major formation level.
The next clash between Syria and Israel, which occurred in
November 1985, was caused by Syrian opposition to Israel's air
surveillance in Lebanon. When Syrian fighter aircraft scrambled
to prevent Israeli aircraft flying over eastern Lebanon, two
Syrian MiG-23s were shot down in Syrian airspace. Syria responded
by deploying mobile SA-6 and SA-8 SAMs into eastern Lebanon and
by setting up SA-2 sites along its border with Lebanon.
Thereafter, the potential for rapid escalation in Syrian-Israeli
hostilities became a source of concern on both sides. Following
the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, Syrian influence and control
expanded to eastern Lebanon and the Biqa Valley, where Syria
maintained about two divisions; about six divisions were
redeployed in the Damascus-Golan Heights region.
In 1987, Israel continued to be Syria's overriding security
concern. Syrian leaders reiterated their denunciation of late
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's 1977-81 peace initiative as
"capitulationist" and continued to demand that all territory
occupied by Israel in 1967 be returned. They also considered the
fulfillment of the national rights of the Palestinians as a
primary objective of any peace talks with Israel. These demands
encompassed both military and political considerations.
Militarily, Israel's annexation and settlement of the Golan
Heights gave it a strategic military position less than 100
kilometers from Damascus
(see fig. 14, Disengagement
Lines and
Israeli Settlements on the Golan Heights). Politically, Assad and
his colleagues wanted the Arab world to support Syria as the
leader of the Arab "confrontationist" or "rejectionist" states.
They felt their position was justified in light of Egypt's
decision to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict with
Israel and Syria's defense of its position in Lebanon against the
1982 Israeli invasion.
Although a major buildup of the Syrian Army following the
1982 Lebanon War resulted in increased confidence in Syria's
military capability, outside observers concluded that Syria would
lose any future military confrontation with Israel. Israeli armed
forces were considered far more skilled and innovative, in terms
of manpower and materiel, than those of Syria. Even were there an
alliance with other Arab states, such as Jordan, Libya, and Iraq,
few analysts doubted in early 1987 that Israel would prove
militarily victorious. Nevertheless, Syria's military inferiority
has not precluded (as illustrated by its 1973 offensive)
intervention in Lebanon, support for terrorist activities, or
pursuit of a military option against Israel. Despite its losses
on the battlefield, Syria won some political and territorial
gains in the October 1973 War, the mid-1970s disengagement
agreements, and the 1982 Lebanese War. Syria's continued efforts
to massively reinforce its military capabilities with Soviet aid
were designed to bolster the military option to retake the Golan
Heights without the aid of Egypt, Syria's traditional Arab ally.
Data as of April 1987
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