Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was a “historic day in the Middle East” and the fall of a “central link in Iran’s axis of evil.”
Netanyahu said the events are “a direct consequence of the blows we have dealt to Iran and Hezbollah, Assad’s main supporters. It has set off a chain reaction across the Middle East, empowering those trying to free themselves from this oppressive regime.”
He spoke during a visit to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In recent months, Israel has killed commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as senior leaders of Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, both of which are backed by Tehran.
The Israeli prime minister said the overthrow of Assad “offers significant new opportunities” for Israel “but is not without risks.”
He said his country was “adopting a good neighborly policy” and that: “We extend a hand of peace to our Druze neighbors, who are brothers of our Druze citizens in Israel. We also extend this hand of peace to the Kurds, Christians and Muslims who want to live peacefully with Israel.”
Syria is a multi-ethnic, multi-denominational country with significant minorities of Christians, Alawites and Kurds, as well as the Druze, an ethno-religious Arab minority group with significant populations in Israel and Lebanon, and others.
“We will closely monitor developments and take the necessary steps to defend our border and our security,” Netanyahu said.
He also said he had ordered the army to take control of a demilitarized buffer zone on the Syrian border.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said of Iran during the same trip: “The tentacles are being cut one by one.”
Islamist-led Syrian rebels overthrew more than fifty years of rule by Assad and his father Hafez in a lightning offensive that began on November 27. This dramatically ended years of stalemate in the civil war that started in 2011.
Assad was backed by substantial military support from Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, and from 2015 also by the Russian military.
The Israeli army killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a massive airstrike on Beirut in September.
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks in the country, mainly targeting the army and Iranian-backed groups.
The army stepped up such attacks after nearly a year of hostilities with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated in late September, before a ceasefire took effect on November 27, the same day the Syrian rebels’ advance began.
Israel rarely comments on individual attacks in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)