Why is Israel bombing Syria?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Syria navigates a fragile political transition, Israel has wiped out much of Syrian military assets, pushed further into Syrian territory, and approved a plan to expand settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. How will Syria’s new leadership respond?
In this episode:
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Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi (@ajaltamimi), Research Fellow, Middle East Forum
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Khaled Soltan and Tamara Khandaker, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Hagir Saleh, Duha Mosaad, Chloe K. Li, and our host, Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, a new chapter in Syria opens, under Israeli fire. |
| 0:17.0 | Israeli rockets continued to pound Syrian army bases on Tuesday and strikes it says aim to keep weapons from falling into hostile hands. |
| 0:26.6 | As Israel expands its hold on Syrian territory, how will Syria's new leadership respond? |
| 0:34.3 | I'm Malika Bilal and this is The Take. |
| 0:49.3 | My name's Eamon Joad Tamimi. I'm a research-feld Middle East Forum, which is a US think tank. I followed the Syrian war since the outbreak in 2011 and I did during the war focus on what Israel was doing via Syria during the war. |
| 1:01.1 | Amen, welcome to the take. It's good to have you and your expertise here. I want to start the conversation in one particular place, and that is Mount Hermon, also known in Arabic as Jabal Sheikh. |
| 1:12.4 | The Israeli military sees control of it because of its strategic importance, overlooking |
| 1:18.5 | Damascus. But I've also seen some conversations online recently about the epic skiing that is |
| 1:26.6 | to come once Israel fully expands and takes it over, |
| 1:31.2 | and the ski resorts that will result from that. What is behind the interest here? |
| 1:37.3 | So to be clear, the Mount Hermann area, it is intersecting on the border between the Israeli |
| 1:43.5 | occupied Golanites right in the northeast corner of Israel. the border between the Israeli-occupied Golden Heights right in the |
| 1:45.5 | northeast corner of Israel. I mean, Israeli-controlled territory at least, and Syria's southwest border. |
| 1:53.8 | And the Israelis, of course, for context, have controlled the Golden Heights since 1967, |
| 1:59.4 | and they've also applied Israeli civil law there since |
| 2:02.9 | 1981. So effectively, the Israelis have annexed it. And as we can see also since how the wars |
| 2:10.1 | developed, they don't have any intention of relinquishing control of the Golden Heights, |
| 2:14.5 | especially after what's happened with the war in Syria. |
| 2:25.2 | But taking positions on Mount Hermann that were previously held by the Syrian army under Assad's regime, it's not just isolated to that. The Israelis have launched incursions |
| 2:30.3 | actually pretty much along the entire border of the Golden Heights, stretching from right |
| 2:35.8 | the intersection of Lebanon, Syria and the Golden Heights, right down through to the, |
... |
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