A drone view shows the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria. (File photo by Reuters)
Israeli warplanes have conducted airstrikes adjacent to the presidential palace in the Syrian capital of Damascus, marking the regime's second attack in the Arab country this week amid the silence of the ruling Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham-led (HTS) administration.
Since Bashar Assad’s government collapsed in December, Syria has also been plagued by a widespread Israeli occupation across large swathes of the country’s south. It has also been hit by hundreds of Israeli airstrikes, mainly targeting military infrastructure that belonged to the former Syrian army.
Israeli authorities have tried to paint the Friday attack as a support for the Druze community, which is clashing with the HTS-backed militants near Damascus in a new wave of sectarian violence under the rule of the HTS administration. The violence has left dozens of people dead or wounded.
This is while the Druze minority had a history of supporting the Assad government and standing against Israeli occupation and expansionist policies, including in the occupied Golan Heights.
Back in early March, veteran Druze leader Walid Jumblatt had warned of an Israeli plot to divide Syria along sectarian lines.
"The free Syrians must be cautious of the plots of Israel," Jumblatt said. "In Syria, there is a plot for sabotage. There is a plot for sabotage in the region and for the Arabs' national security."
The Friday attack came a day after the Israeli regime's interior minister Moshe Arbel called for immediate Israeli intervention in Syria on the pretext of defending the Druze community.
This week's sectarian violence began in the predominantly Druze city of Jaramana on Tuesday, sparked by a voice recording allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and which the regime's militants suspected was made by a Druze.
However, the spiritual authority for the Jaramana Druze community said the audio clip was fabricated “to incite sedition and sow division among the people of the same nation.”
The deadly clashes in Druze areas followed a wave of massacres in March in Syria's Mediterranean coast, during which the HTS-aligned militants killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly from the Alawite community.
The Israeli military operations in Syria come as minister of military affairs Israel Katz said on Sunday that Israel is planning to keep its occupation forces in southern Lebanon and Syria “indefinitely.”
On Thursday, Lebanon's Al Mayadeen TV, citing local sources, said the Israeli army is establishing two new outposts in the countryside of Damascus, facing the Hasbaya district of southern Lebanon.
The intensified Israeli aggression against Syria continues despite HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani's repeated overtures to the occupying regime.
Last Thursday, US Congressman Cory Mills told Bloomberg after meeting Jolani in Damascus that Syria's de facto leader seeks to normalize ties with Israel and that he was carrying a letter from him for Trump.
