Israel expands airstrikes across Syria, destroys Syrian navy

Israel launched waves of heavy airstrikes across Syria on Tuesday, hitting what it said were military targets to prevent abandoned weapons from falling into the hands of rebel fighters.

The intensified aerial campaign, carried out in parallel with Israel’s first ground operation in Syrian territory since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, drew international condemnation and added another dangerous variable to the fast-moving situation in Syria, where armed groups are trying to create a new political order after the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Tuesday that warplanes had launched 350 strikes on Syrian territory since Sunday, destroying dozens of missiles, an airfield, weapons production sites across five cities, and 15 naval vessels - effectively eliminating the Syrian navy.

Images of the aftermath on Syrian television showed sunken boats and smoldering wreckage in the western city of Latakia, the country’s main port and a former stronghold of Assad and his minority Alawite base. Other videos showed scorched buildings, a destroyed aircraft hangar and loud explosions from the heavy bombardment.

[Joy, fear and confusion in Damascus as Syrians welcome life after Assad]

Israeli officials have characterized the extensive strikes as preemptive in nature, protecting the country from future attack rather than responding to a current threat. They invoked a similar rationale Monday in defending the movement of troops beyond a U.N.-monitored buffer zone in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

“I approved the air force bombing of strategic military capabilities left by the Syrian military so that they will not fall into the hands of the jihadists,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video address Tuesday.

Netanyahu said Israel wants relations with the new government in Syria, but he warned the rebels against attacking Israel or allowing Iran or its proxies to regain a foothold in the country. “We will respond with force and exact a heavy price,” he said.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel group that led the lightning offensive - sweeping south from its home base in northern Idlib to the presidential palace in Damascus in under two weeks - has yet to comment on the Israeli strikes. Its members remain largely preoccupied with navigating the transition from a military to a political force, and they are scrambling to address cash and food shortages in the capital and beyond. Elsewhere in the country, other armed groups are still vying for influence, seeking to fill the sudden power vacuum after more than half a century of Assad family rule.

“We are continuing to see Israeli movements and bombardments into Syrian territory,” Geir Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy to Syria, said Tuesday. “This needs to stop.” Similar urgings have come from governments across the Middle East, from Baghdad to Riyadh.

The Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry accused Israel on Monday of violating international law and “sabotag[ing] Syria’s chances of restoring its security, stability and territorial integrity.”

The United States, Israel’s main military and diplomatic backer, described its ally’s military activities as “non-permanent” in nature and taking place under “exigent circumstances.”

“We don’t want to see any actor … move themselves in such a way that makes it harder for the Syrian people to get at legitimate governance,” John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council spokesman, told reporters Tuesday.

Israel has simultaneously taken credit for the fall of Assad - with Netanyahu boasting Monday that he had “reshaped the Middle East” by weakening Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah - while expressing fears over the shape of the new Syrian state. HTS was formed as an offshoot of al-Qaeda during the country’s civil war but has sought to rebrand as a moderate Islamist organization, vowing to protect religious minorities and restore the country’s standing in the region.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said the military was aiming to establish a “sterile defense zone” in southern Syria and “prevent the entrenchment and organization of terror.”

As Syria’s military largely melted away in the face of the rebel advances, it vacated military bases believed to store significant munitions and gear, including the remnants of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile.

A nerve-gas attack by the Syrian government on a Damascus suburb in 2013 killed nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children, according to U.S. intelligence. The attack was described by American officials at the time as an “indiscriminate, inconceivable horror.” Under a deal brokered between then-President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, hundreds of tons of chemical weapons were removed from Syria and destroyed - depleting but not eliminating Assad’s arsenal.

By striking the sites now, Israel is acting within a “window of opportunity,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former Israeli military official now with the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

He said the attacks on chemical and other munitions were necessary “to make sure whoever is going to be the next ruler [of Syria] is not going to have state-of-the-art weaponry.” And Israel couldn’t have launched the strikes while Assad was in power, he added: “It would have been considered belligerent activity. Now I think everyone understands.”

That understanding does not extend to ordinary Syrians, whose euphoria over Assad’s ouster is now tempered by renewed anxiety over insecurity as explosions rock the capital.

“The feeling of fear has now started to go,” Hani Qusebatuy, 27, said Monday as he joined hundreds of people celebrating in Damascus. “Now the only feeling of fear is the Israeli attacks.”

The United States has also launched strikes on Syria this week, with the Pentagon saying it hit 75 Islamic State targets Sunday in the central desert. About 900 American troops remain in Syria, a vestige of the forces deployed a decade ago to fight the Islamic State, which sought to establish a “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and Iraq.

Ryan C. Crocker, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Syria, warned during an event at the Middle East Institute on Tuesday that Israel’s military operations in Syria risk “repercussions beyond which the Israelis intend.”

Addressing their moves in the Golan, he said any long-term occupation of the area “could add fuel already to a fire.”

“So the Israelis, in presumably taking preemptively defensive moves, need to be very careful that they don’t spark a new militancy directed at them,” he said.