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 result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, Assad’s main supporters. It has triggered a chain reaction across the Middle East, empowering those seeking to break free from this oppressive regime.”
He spoke on a visit to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In recent months, Israel has killed commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the senior leaders of Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, both of which are backed by Tehran.
The Israeli premier said Assad’s overthrow “presents significant new opportunities” for Israel “but is not without risks”.
He said his country was “pursuing a good neighbour policy” and that: “We extend a hand of peace to our Druze neighbours, who are brothers to our Druze citizens in Israel. We also extend this hand of peace to Kurds, Christians, and Muslims who wish to live peacefully with Israel.”
Syria is a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional 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 military to take control of a demilitarised buffer zone on the Syrian border.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, speaking on the same trip, said of Iran: “Its tentacles are being severed one by one”.
Islamist-led Syrian rebels overthrew more than five decades of rule by Assad and his father Hafez in a lightning offensive that began on November 27, dramatically overturning a years-long stalemate in the civil war that began in 2011.
Assad was propped up by substantial military support from Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, as well as by the Russian military from 2015 onwards.
The Israeli military killed long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a massive air strike on Beirut in September.
Since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting the army and Iran-backed groups.
The military intensified such strikes after almost a year of hostilities with Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon escalated in late September, before a ceasefire took effect on November 27, the same day Syria’s rebel advance began.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes 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.)