2024 Syrian opposition offensives - The first Syrian rebel offensive against Government forces since March 2020

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The Israelis have blown up another convoy of gov't reinforcements bound for Suwayda, (burning vehicles but no dead/wounded can be seen in this vid)



However this airstrike has not dissuaded gov't forces already in & around Suwayda from continuing to fight and push ahead. Tonight the Syrian Army has been recorded targeting the last villages held by Al-Hijri's forces (the Suwayda Military Council & Men of Dignity militias) with rocket artillery:



'Red Band' fighters, HTS' elite shock troops who specialized in night combat and were given the best night-vision equipment they got their hands on back during the civil war proper vs. Assad, also already made it to Suwayda yesterday. So it looks like the SA/GSS might well attempt a night assault on the remaining Hijrist Druze holdouts.

Suwayda itself seems to have calmed down earlier in the day, since Hijri's men were driven out into the above rural villages in spite of the Israeli airstrikes. Not too much damage was done to the city in the recent fighting it seems.



What was said about the Suwayda streets can't be said about its central hospital though, that place is a charnel house. Gov't troops found a shit ton of dead people upon retaking it from the Druze (who, in turn, recaptured it from the SA/GSS forces in yesterday's fighting).


The Druze reportedly threw many gov't fighters' corpses out of the hospital or burnt them, like this unfortunate fellow from Homs.

syr-hts-death.webp

Outside of but directly related to Syria, some of Lebanon's Druze wanted to jump in the fight but were held back by the Lebanese Army, for now. Also Walid Jumblatt, the head honcho of the Lebanese Druze, is against intervention and claims that Israel's just using Al-Hijri so they can pretend to be 'protecting vulnerable minority communities' while stirring shit up in Syria.

 
Laith al-Balous, military leader of the anti-Hijri/anti-Israel/pro-gov't Druze camp, explains his & his faction's position in an interview (thankfully with English subtitles). Tl;dw it's a position of Syrian nationalism, he categorically rejects separatism and the Israeli intervention, implies his enemies are cowards & traitors (he goes off for a bit about how they didn't 'show their bravery' against Assad - he & his family were among the more notable Druze rebels back in the day, while Al-Hijri was one of Assad's primary supporters among the Druze).



Back on the frontlines, gov't artillery strikes against the towns still held by Al-Hijri continue into the night. According to the comments, the last two towns still held by Al-Hijri's men are called Atel and Al-Kafr, the third Hijri stronghold of Qanwat having fallen earlier in the day (hence those vids of gov't troops rifling through his house on the last page).

 

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Israel truly is unhinged country that can't ever trusted, involving themselves with Syria will pull more countries in the region away from them. regime change bibi he needs to go!.
Some friends and relatives of mine went to Majdal to try and get into Syria, (of course) they got turned back

All safe here by the way

i feel so bad for the Syrian druzes, but i don't understand why most of them didn't flee to israel and live there instead of being ruled over by these genocidal terrorists.
 
AJ has given a speech. Can't upload a local version for whatever reason (size? It ended up being an 86 MB download for me), so it will have to fall to someone else to do that.

English translation:
President Al-Shara'a: The Israeli entity, which has always targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime, is now seeking once again to transform our pure land into an arena of endless chaos, through which it seeks to dismantle the unity of our people and weaken our ability to move forward in the process of reconstruction and advancement.

Our people revolted to achieve their freedom, won, and made enormous sacrifices. This people remains ready to fight for their dignity if it is threatened.

This entity continues to use all means to sow conflict and strife, ignoring the fact that Syrians, throughout their long history, have rejected all forms of separation and division.

Possessing great power does not necessarily mean achieving victory, just as victory in one arena does not guarantee success in another. You may be able to start a war, but it is not easy to control its outcomes. We are the sons of this land, and we are more capable of overcoming all attempts by the Israeli entity aimed at tearing us apart, and we are too strong to let our resolve be shaken by fabricated seditions.

We, the people of Syria, know very well who is trying to drag us into war and who seeks to divide us. We will not give them the opportunity to embroil our people in a war they wish to ignite on our land, a war whose sole aim is to fragment our homeland and disperse our efforts toward chaos and destruction. Syria is not a testing ground for foreign conspiracies, nor is it a place to realize the ambitions of others at the expense of our children and women.

The Syrian state is everyone's state. It is the nation's dignity and pride, and it is every Syrian's dream to see his country rebuild itself. Through this state, we all unite without discrimination, in order to restore Syria's prestige and place it at the forefront of nations living in security and stability.

Building a new Syria requires all of us to rally around our state, adhere to its principles, and place the nation's interests above all individual or limited considerations. What we need today is for all of us to be partners in this construction and to work hand in hand to overcome all the challenges we face.

Unity is our weapon, hard work is our path, and our solid will is the foundation upon which we will build this prosperous future.

I also address our Druze people, who are an integral part of the fabric of this nation. Syria will never be a place for division, fragmentation, or the sowing of discord among its people. We assure you that protecting your rights and freedom is our priority, and that we reject any effort aimed at dragging you to an external party or creating division within our ranks. We are all partners in this land, and we will not allow any group to distort this beautiful image that expresses Syria and its diversity.
The Syrian gov't forces are also reportedly withdrawing from Suwayda.



So it would seem that although they were still winning on the ground in spite of the Israeli airstrikes, the SA/GSS have been compelled to withdraw and leave local factions in control of Suwayda at the end anyway. Idk, maybe Bibi successfully spooked AJ into fucking off with the threat of a full-on ground invasion and/or Iranian-style decapitation strikes behind the scenes, or he just got to Trump first and was more persuasive than the Syrian gov't's Gulf & Turkish backers, or a combination of both.

It remains to be seen how the last 24 hours of fighting has affected the balance of power in Suwayda and whether the pro-gov't Druze like Al-Balous, Al-Hinnawi & Jarbou can retain control or if enough of Al-Hijri's men survived for him to make a comeback with Israeli support. If the former is the case, then Suwayda will probably remain autonomous but definitively under Syrian state control. If the latter, then as I have said before, Al-Hijri will try to turn Suwayda into the Syrian Druze version of Haddad & Lahad's southern Lebanese fiefdom under the Israeli occupation - it'll be an Israeli puppet inside Syria, and a thorn in the side of the Damascus-based gov't, for as long as Israeli support still exists (if the Jews pull back for whatever reason, then also like the SLA, it will in all likelihood disintegrate instantly; note that Al-Hijri's militias were getting their asses beat even after the IAF started bombing pretty heavily, which does not bode well for their popular support or their ability to survive outside the Israeli security umbrella in the least).

Also, it's probably safe to say that the chances of Syria joining the Abraham Accords just dropped to zero.
What the fuck Israel?
They literally had a government in Syria basically standing down and ready to agree to partial demilitarization and they go and sperg out over minority factions
Netanyahu may have gained a pawn deep inside Syria, if Al-Hijri is able to secure power in Suwayda in the near future, but he's also just killed any hope of peace & normalization with Syria and under the most accommodating Syrian gov't Israel has had since pretty much the start of their modern history no less. Seems Israel would continue to favor & hope for constant balkanization, chaos & bloodshed over even the first tepid step towards peace on its northern frontier.
 
Israel at this point is just speed running a low reputation run. Like it's been what? 3 or 4 wars in the past three years?


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Tbf, having an actual genocide on your doorstep would have Israel being blamed at causing it like in Sabra and Shatila massacre. And the Druze themselves are some of the saner groups around that serve in the IDF, so telling them "not my problem" is a dick move.
 
Tbf, having an actual genocide on your doorstep would have Israel being blamed at causing it like in Sabra and Shatila massacre. And the Druze themselves are some of the saner groups around that serve in the IDF, so telling them "not my problem" is a dick move.
The difference is that Sabra and Shatila happened in an area Israel occupied, and was done by a militia armed and supported by Israel, after being told: “Sure would be terrible if there was a massacre in those camps! We wouldn’t be able to do anything if it’s done by dawn! WINK WINK. We will just go ahead and block all exits for… Reasons!”

Literally nobody would blame Israel for headchoppers killing another tribe in a different country.
 
Interesting how this was sold in Israel and Zionist media as a genocide of all Druze, not just a political group of them
It wasn't a mass killing of a group of them either, but a political conflict between Israeli puppets on one side and independent Druze and the Damascus government on the other.
Bedouin and Druze clans feuding over resources and honor is neither here nor there, though ofc shills present anything and everything as "genocidal sectarian violence ordered by ISIS terrorist Jolani".

I wonder whether they'll report on atrocities committed by the Druze now. It completely breaks their black-and-white narrative and the scale and nature of them makes it difficult to spin.

In any case, yesterday merchants in Daraa were calling for a peaceful boycott. Today mosques are calling for fighters to mobilize.
This is how the Israeli government using the Syrian Druze as pawns for their ploys is working out for those they claim to want to protect.


What was said about the Suwayda streets can't be said about its central hospital though, that place is a charnel house. Gov't troops found a shit ton of dead people upon retaking it from the Druze (who, in turn, recaptured it from the SA/GSS forces in yesterday's fighting).
That shortened clip was spread a lot on social media with comments saying this is the aftermath of STG troops massacring hospital patients or such, but in the full video you can see hospital staff acting normally around the soldiers.
 
Druze narco-militias massacring Bedouin women and children while flying Star of David flags is certainly a choice.

Israel is working hand in glove with Iran on this issue.
Both Iran and Israel want to keep Syria as a failed state so they can play games with each other. Where is Turkey and the Saudis when we need them? Ideally they could be used as a peacekeeping force. The Syrian people have been through enough tbh.
 
Tbf, having an actual genocide on your doorstep would have Israel being blamed at causing it like in Sabra and Shatila massacre. And the Druze themselves are some of the saner groups around that serve in the IDF, so telling them "not my problem" is a dick move.
It's a Middle Eastern civil war, everyone involved is a nigger who'd chimp out if given the least bit of power and would absolutely genocide their enemies at the first opportunity. Most certainly including the 'saner' groups, if they can do it with the backing of Israeli firepower then all the better, just as it was Christians who did Sabra & Shatila so too it's the Druze today. Here Al-Hijri's militiamen are massacring Sunni Bedouins and proclaiming their intent to ethnically cleanse Suwayda, beheading Bedouin children, and torturing prisoners into proclaiming al-Hijri their king & a crown on the head of AJ.





syr-druze-bedouin-kids.webp
Interesting how this was sold in Israel and Zionist media as a genocide of all Druze, not just a political group of them
No surprise, it's literally the SLA playbook from Lebanon.

1) Find an endangered sect in another country's chaotic environment with many enemies which would absolutely severely repress/genocide them at the first opportunity and have already committed multiple massacres against them. (Christians in Lebanon, Druze here in Syria)

2) Occupy parts of this other country as a 'security zone'.

3) Find local collaborators from the sect in 1) and present them as saviors defending their downtrodden people in order to legitimize further occupation. (Saad Haddad & Antoine Lahad for Lebanon, Hikmat al-Hijri for Syria)

4) Oopsie poopsie, those collaborators turn out to be barbaric and venal thugs even by sandnigger standards, and with their actions they rapidly burn through what little credibility & legitimacy they may have had at the start even with the sect they claim to represent. Well, if they were actually competent & likable they probably wouldn't have needed 100% Israeli backing and consequently been 100% Israeli puppets in the first place, now would they. (Haddad & Lahad got fired from the official Lebanese army and declared traitors by the still-Christian-led gov't, Al-Hijri is already a drug trafficker working the routes into Jordan)

5) Wanna do something about it? Tough shit Lebanese/Syrian niggers, Israel has the biggest guns in the region and will turn you into paste if you inconvenience, much less try to actually stop them or their thuggish pets from doing whatever they want in their 'security zone'. So South Lebanon had to eat shit & put up with the SLA's 20-year nigger moment, as the non-Druze and non-Hijri-supporting Druze might have to in Suwayda, while Israel tells the world what good boys they & their pets are! Protecting the vulnerable Christians of Lebanon/Druze of Syria from genocide & sectarian oppression, maintaining an oasis of peace & harmony in a war-torn desert, all that jazz. <--We are here.

6) Except Israel turns out to be less invincible than claimed and eventually got worn down by constant Hezbollah needling + their own changing concerns, so they fuck off after 20 years. Abandoned, the SLA - loathed by everyone who still considers themselves Lebanese or has any respect for their Lebanese heritage at that point - doesn't last a minute against the vengeful Hezbollah & Shiite lynch mobs moving into the south.

7) Oh yeah, and that troubled sect Israel's pets claimed to be representing, they're good & fucked now even if they did disavow the treasonous actions of their fellow Christians/Druze. Syria under Assad Sr. & Hezbollah could, for several years actually, kill or arrest any remotely politically active Maronite Christian who wasn't also 100% a dhimmi for them and claim it was justified because that nigga was totally a Zionist shill on Tel Aviv's payroll just like Haddad & Lahad, bros, trust us - and people would actually believe them because of the specter of the SLA, which had made being a Syrian shill seem less repulsive than (or even necessary to avoid becoming) an Israeli shill. The same fate almost certainly awaits the Druze of Syria, considering that HTS is no less Islamist than Hezbollah (just Sunni rather than Shia). As for the rival foreign backer, substitute Turkey & Saudi Arabia/the Gulf kingdoms for Syria (since this is Syria in Lebanon's position now ironically).

8 ) Kiss goodbye to any prospect of peace & normalization while (and probably for many years after) Israel's actively bombing & occupying/having pet militias occupy parts of the other country BTW, Amine Gemayel (Christian president of Lebanon) tried to get a peace agreement with Israel, obviously that didn't and couldn't work as long as his opponents and even supporters could credibly claim that any move towards peace with Israel while the SLA existed & they occupied South Lebanon was tantamount to treasonous surrender. Thus also for any Syrian participation in the Abraham Accords.

Truly there's nothing new under the sun. Well, difference is that it's much easier to circulate information now than it was in the '80s and '90s, so the saintly Druze who were under threat of extermination got exposed as child-beheading power-tripping genocidal cunts no better than the Islamists they're fighting & which Israel is claiming to prop them up against within less than 24h of Israel giving them a W. I doubt Israel could've kept the charade up for 20+ years if HD clips of what the SLA were up to at Al-Khiam Prison were made publicly viewable to millions online within hours or days of them committing said atrocities rather than years, back in the day.
 
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Kiss goodbye to any prospect of peace & normalization while (and probably for many years after) Israel's actively bombing & occupying/having pet militias occupy parts of the other country BTW, Amine Gemayel (Christian president of Lebanon) tried to get a peace agreement with Israel, obviously that didn't and couldn't work as long as his opponents and even supporters could credibly claim that any move towards peace with Israel while the SLA existed & they occupied South Lebanon was tantamount to treasonous surrender.
Bashir Gemayil would have gotten Israel out though, his killing fucked everything up
 
Bashir Gemayil would have gotten Israel out though, his killing fucked everything up
Yes, the other Gemayel was a far better leader than his brother Amine, probably the most brutally effective leader around for all of Lebanon's Christians tbh. And the SSNP were niggers for assassinating him (on top of that whole 'wants Lebanon to be destroyed & dissolved into Syria' core plank of their platform). However even he couldn't have delivered the peace agreement as long as the SLA were around and the Israelis occupied South Lebanon, he was an actual Lebanese nationalist and even if he wasn't it would've destroyed his political position, IIRC he basically told Begin he didn't fight for seven years trying to claw Lebanon out from under slavery to Syria just to enslave them to Israel and also really wanted to put Haddad on trial (and then shoot him most likely, considering how he dealt with other high-profile opponents from inside the Christian camp) for his treason.

If Gemayel had been able to simultaneously negotiate an early Israeli withdrawal and a Jordan/Egypt-style peace treaty, I don't doubt Lebanon would have been far better off than it is now, even a Christian dictatorship would've at least avoided the latter half of the civil war and the reduction of the Lebanese Christians to a buckbroken minority (with many fleeing the country, and taking their money with them). But that's enough alternate-history gaming out of me...
 
man there’s something genuinely wrong with Syrians or all Levant people, two days ago i was feeling sympathetic for the druzes and now they’re straight up genociding bedouin tribes. there’s something cursed in that land. I’m just gonna stop feeling sorry for minorities there cause they all pull the same shit against each other.
 
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So what is exactly happening here? Druze militias are fighting with the new government?
Oh they're going past that now, the Druze & Israel are straight up trying to establish a South Lebanon Syria Security Belt Administration covering Suwayda and Daraa (necessary for the land connection to Israel) now. A new speech by Netanyahu on this subject,



PM Netanyahu: Peace through Strength

"I want to update you on what we have done in Syria and what we will do in Syria.

We have established a clear policy: demilitarization of the area south of Damascus, from the Golan Heights to the Druze Mountain region—that’s one line.

The second line is protecting our brothers, the Druze, in the Druze Mountain. Both of these were violated by the regime in Damascus. It sent an army south of Damascus, into the area that is supposed to be demilitarized, and it began slaughtering the Druze.

We could not accept this in any way. Therefore, I instructed the IDF to act—and to act with force.

The air force struck both the murderous gangs and the armored units. I also added a target to strike the Ministry of Defense in Damascus.

As a result of this intense activity, a ceasefire was established, and the Syrian forces retreated back to Damascus. This is important.

This ceasefire was achieved through strength. Not through requests, not through pleas—through strength. We achieve peace through strength, quiet through strength, security through strength—across seven fronts.

This will continue to be our policy—we will not allow military forces to move south of Damascus, and we will not allow harm to come to the Druze in Jabal Druze.

I want to share with you something that deeply moved me in the last two days. Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the leader of the Druze in Israel, reached out to me. He said the following: ‘During the Holocaust, when you, the Jews, were being slaughtered, you called for help, and no one came. Today, we, the Druze, are being slaughtered, and we are calling for the help of the State of Israel.’

And I said, you are right!"
(English translation)

'Demilitarization of the area south of Damascus, from the Golan Heights to the Druze Mountain region' would by necessity include Daraa, where the revolution & consequent civil war began in the first place, since it's right between Israel and Suwayda (where the Druze are). Besides Daraa City's symbolic value to the victorious rebels, the Daraa countryside is also teeming with Sunni Arab tribes that are anti-Israel and, obviously, royally pissed off at the Druze ethnically cleansing their cousins one governorate away; they will almost certainly fight even if Al-Sharaa doesn't, his control in the south isn't absolute the way it is in Idlib, and pretty much everyone down there's got a gun since the civil war days. Israel also needs the Daraa overland connection to bolster & supply Suwayda, since the Jordanian border is closed (due to drug trafficking by Al-Hijri's men) and the Druze battle performance was so bad that not even the Israeli airstrikes could save them, it seems to have taken the risk of a full-on IDF ground invasion to get AJ to back off.

Now, AJ's army was able to still almost defeat the Druze even when they had Israeli air support but to state the obvious, they have no chance against the IDF. If and when the IDF moves eastward (as they will have to if Bibi is actually serious about turning Al-Hijri's men into the Syrian Druze equivalent to the South Lebanon Army) then whatever AJ does or doesn't do matters less than the tribes of Daraa. A 'demilitarized zone' where Israel and its pets are the only non-demilitarized parties would = the South Lebanon Security Belt where only the IDF and SLA were supposed to be armed, and we know how that went. With most of their heavy weapons, AA defenses and the former SyAAF destroyed already, Syria's only hope if/when Israel drives east is the Hezbollah strat in South Lebanon, ie. fight a guerrilla war for 20+ years until Israel gets so bored & tired of rising casualties that they fuck off, leaving their hated collaborators vulnerable.

Speaking of the South Lebanon Army, al-Hijri's army continues to rival them in fighting ability or rather lack thereof, it's been a few hours since their mobilization and Bedouin tribesmen (arriving from outside Suwayda to fight for their fellow Bedouins) are driving them from the villages in the western Suwayda countryside already. More evidence as to why Israel has to commit ground forces and push into Daraa if they're actually serious about carving out a Druze client state, their chosen proxies on the ground are useless niggers who talk mad shit and treat defenseless civilians as viciously as any other ragtag Syrian militia but can barely fight against people who actually shoot back even with the IAF covering them from above. Very similar to the former SLA indeed, or the SNA in the north (the Turkish proxies) but even those guys tend to fare a little bit better against the Kurds.

 
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