Between the Hammer of Direct Zionist Occupation in the South and the Anvil of the New “Thermidorian Authority’s” Maneuvers: No Alternative to Organizing Popular Resistance

FRONT LINE– Exclusive

While the Zionist war machine continues to entrench its direct occupation of vast parts of southern Syria, statements by leaders of the enemy entity are escalating in sharpness, revealing the depth of colonial ambitions in post-Assad Syria and the nature of the pressures being exerted on the new authority in Damascus to drag it into the square of total capitulation under the guise of “security coordination.”

The so-called Foreign Minister in the enemy government, Gideon Sa’ar, stated today, Wednesday, that the gap in security negotiations with the Syrian side has “widened,” attributing this to the “emergence of new demands from the Syrian side.” Sa’ar added in his usual arrogant tone: “We want an agreement, but we are far from it compared to where we were a few weeks ago.” These statements coincided with a direct threat from the Zionist Minister of “Diaspora Affairs,” Amichai Chikli, who deemed that “war with Syria is inevitable,” using the pretext of chants by Syrian soldiers in solidarity with Gaza during the anniversary of the fall of the defunct regime.

The Position of the Revolutionary Left Party: Tactical Maneuvers for an Authority Re-producing the Old Regime

Commenting on these developments and the clear vacillation in the official positions of the new Syrian authority towards the Zionist entity, an official spokesperson for the Revolutionary Left Current in Syria gave an exclusive statement to “Al-Khat Al-Amami,” analyzing the nature and dangers of these shifts.

The party spokesperson said: “We are closely monitoring the shifts in political discourse of the new de facto authority – which we consider a Thermidorian authority par excellence that has re-produced the essence of the fallen regime with new faces. Their discourse has shifted from the initial declaration of the impossibility of normalization without reclaiming the Golan, passing through timid references to the genocide in Gaza, arriving at permitting anti-entity chants on the anniversary of the fall, which the enemy met by announcing new Syrian demands hindering a security agreement.”

The spokesperson added: “The essential question here is: Can these positions be relied upon and considered a radical shift towards the option of resistance? Our materialist analysis of reality answers with a categorical no. We are facing purely negotiating tactics aimed at improving the terms of the deal with imperialism and its proxies, and perhaps improving the negotiating position of the Turkish backer, in a flagrant repetition of the same opportunistic pragmatic approach practiced by the Assad regime and its Iranian allies for decades, where resistance slogans were used as a commodity for bargaining.”

The spokesperson emphasized in his statement to “front line”: “We in the Revolutionary Left fully realize that calling for a direct, comprehensive military confrontation with the entity under the current skewed balance of forces is a form of uncalculated adventurism. However, the true criterion for the seriousness of any authority in confronting the enemy lies not in boastful speeches, but in building a long-term resistance strategy. This construction begins first and exclusively through maintaining society and empowering it, and building its intrinsic economic and social capabilities for steadfastness and confrontation.”

He continued, explaining: “Here lies the glaring evidence that the current authority’s positions are merely tactical bubbles. The material evidence on the ground indicates the exact opposite: First, through this authority’s adoption of savage neoliberal policies that impoverish the people and prevent the establishment of a productive, resistance economy. Second, through its continued repression and targeting of the masses, and enshrining divisions on identity and sectarian bases. They are, simply put, re-producing the same conditions that shackled the Syrian people during the Assad era and prevented them from liberating their land.”

The spokesperson concluded his statement by directing a call to the Syrian masses: “O Syrian men and women, do not mortgage your hopes on an authority that re-produces decades of deception and trading in your national causes. The only path to salvation is adopting an alternative national, democratic, and social project, and organizing independently around it, to build a popular force capable of resisting both occupation and tyranny together.”

Field Report from the South: “We Exchanged Assad’s Tyranny for Direct Military Occupation”

The reality on the ground in southern Syria, far from the corridors of politics in Damascus, reveals the true face of the current phase. A year after the fall of the Assad regime, the people of Quneitra governorate languish under a direct, brutal Israeli military occupation, where the alleged “freedom” evaporated at the contact lines with the enemy.

On December 9, 2024, the people of Quneitra woke up to the sound of Israeli tank treads invading the buffer zone, bypassing UN forces. Instead of Assad’s militia checkpoints, Israeli armored personnel carriers spread through the villages and towns. Abu Ibrahim (52 years old) from the town of Al-Qahtaniyah says: “When the Assad regime fell, we couldn’t even catch our breath; while the regime was collapsing in Damascus, the Zionists were entering upon us here. We exchanged a local tyranny for a direct foreign occupation.”

Entrenching Occupation and Repressing the Population

The occupation is not content with military presence; it is working to engineer the region demographically and securitizers. Enemy bulldozers demolished Abu Ibrahim’s house along with 14 other homes to establish one of six new military bases constructed over the past year. Abu Ibrahim recounts with bitterness the reply of the Zionist soldier when asked about the reason for the demolition: “He said to me insolently: Bashar al-Assad destroyed the whole of Syria, are you upset because we destroyed a few houses?”

Occupation forces impose absolute control over the details of daily life. Checkpoints are run by occupation soldiers, and night raids and phone searches have become a daily routine. The enemy confiscated all weapons, and arrest campaigns are frequent, hiding the fate of many youths for months. Even basic services have become hostage to Israeli “security clearances”; repairing an electrical fault or holding a wedding requires prior permission from the occupier, and drones often accompany farmers in their fields to intimidate them.

Zionist Terror Expands to Daraa Countryside: Arrests and Night Raids

The bleak scene is not limited to Quneitra alone; the Zionist oppression machine is expanding its scope of violation in southern Syria to reach the western countryside of Daraa, playing the role of the “colonial policeman” storming safe homes in the middle of the night to terrorize the inhabitants.

In the latest chapters of this ongoing rampage, a force from the occupation army, at dawn today, Wednesday, carried out a raid and arrest operation in the “Yarmouk Basin” area. Local sources told “Front Line” that a Zionist military convoy consisting of five vehicles and over twenty heavily armed soldiers stormed the Arada area (between the villages of Abdeen and Ma’ariya).

The hostile force besieged the house of citizen “Mohammed Al-Quweider” around 3:00 AM and conducted a thorough and provocative search that lasted over an hour, wreaking havoc on the house’s contents and terrifying its residents. The raid ended with the arrest of “Al-Quweider” and taking him to an unknown destination, which sources suggested might be one of the forward military points recently established by the occupation in the area after the collapse of the previous regime.

This incident, which comes within a continuous series of incursions and arbitrary arrests carried out by the enemy in the Yarmouk Basin without giving reasons, confirms that the occupation seeks to impose a state of “organized terror” to break the will of the people and prevent any attempt at their organization, exploiting the security vacuum and the complete inability of the authority in Damascus to protect its citizens in those violated areas.

Absence and Incapacity of the State

In contrast, the official presence of the new Syrian authority appears almost non-existent. This authority realizes that what remains of its army, after intensive Israeli airstrikes in the first days of Assad’s fall destroyed most of the air force and its depots, is incapable of regular confrontation. Despite talk of US-mediated negotiations to return to the 1974 agreement, the facts on the ground indicate that the occupation seeks to impose a new, long-term fait accompli.

The people of the south live in a state of terror and uncertainty, hesitant to return to their villages which are cut off by Israeli earth berms and tank tracks. While the rest of the Syrian regions try to bandage the wounds of war, Israeli bulldozers dig deep into the land of the south to entrench their bases, amid official incapacity and international complicity.