'It seems they're deceiving West': Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar on Syria's HTS govt

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has warned the Western world that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the new de-facto ruler of Syria, is deceiving them.

Earlier this month, the HTS-led opposition groups in Syria overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime and took over the country. Following the fall of the Assad dynasty, the international community has engaged with the HTS and its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani in their capacity as the country’s de facto rulers.

While world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have warned the HTS that it would be their conduct and not words that would determine the cooperation, the flocking of ministers from Western governments and officials from multilateral organisations to Damascus to engage with the HTS has been met with criticism in some quarters. The critics say that the HTS remains an Islamist authoritarian organisation and proactive engagement with the group legitimises it.

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In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Sa’ar said in Hebrew that the HTS regime is a “pretty extreme regime”.

Sa’ar said, “There is the whole issue of the new regime in Syria if you can even call it that because it’s Islamist — a pretty extreme regime.”

Sa’ar further said that he has “every reason to be suspicious” regarding the HTS.

Sa’ar said, “Of course, I suspect we have every reason to be suspicious. I am also following what’s happening. For example, their new justice minister says there won’t be any women judges,”

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As for the Western engagement with the HTS, Sa’ar said, “We know that the West is being deceived and the world is running to Damascus.”

When asked if Israel has been told to engage with the HTS as well, Sa’ar said that there are those who would want to see that happen.

Following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Israel moved its military into the buffer zone along the Israel-Syria border. In the Syrian side of the buffer zone, the Israeli military has seized strategic locations with the idea of securing Israeli security interests. While Israel has described the move as temporary, it has also said that troops may stay there for years.

Earlier this month, Colonel Benny Kata, the commander of 474th Golan Regional Brigade operating in the region, told The Times of Israel that the Israeli military was working to “prevent jihadi groups from reaching here and breaching the fence, just like we prepared until now for the Iranian axis and their proxies”.

Kata said that there is a lot of uncertainty following the ouster of Assad’s regime because “what has risen is something unclear”.

Kata further said that the Syrian opposition forces on the border are “something different".

Kata added, “We don’t know yet how they will act, and that’s why we took the key positions.”

There are concerns in Israel and elsewhere whether the HTS has given up its terrorist ways. The group was founded as the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda and only formally cut ties with the group in 2016. Since then, the HTS and its leader Jolani, who started out as a terrorist with the Islamic State and switched to Al Qaeda later, have waged a public relations campaign to rebrand themselves as a genuine political group and not just as an armed Islamist group.