[Salon] As Syrian Christians reel Israel capitalises on state failures - ArabDigestl.org Guest Post

As Syrian Christians reel Israel capitalises on state failures Summary: with the Al-Sharaa government tightening its hold Syrian Christians are growing increasingly fearful that an Islamist regime will erode their religious and political rights. It is a fear that Israel is playing on. We thank Andrew McIntosh for today’s newsletter. Andrew is the Director of Research at the NGO SALAM for Democracy and Human Rights. His specialty fields are media analysis, sectarianism and statelessness in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Syria. 2026 has witnessed another milestone in the Syrian transitional government’s consolidation of power, where it integrated the northeast after a brief military campaign. Despite reunification, however, the fragile post-war consensus in the new Syria is being fractured by sectarian incidents, waves of attacks on minorities and policies enacted without national dialogue, which hostile neighbours like Israel are capitalising upon. Continued missteps by the Syrian government, motivated by ideology, are providing Israel with the means to fragment Syrian society further. Before assuming formal state authority over Syria, President Ahmed Al-Sharaa oversaw a political order in Idlib that was grounded in Sunni religious legitimacy, the hierarchical inclusion of minorities and a phased consolidation of power. As potential alternatives to the transitional government have been absorbed or dismantled since the fall of the Assad regime, executive authority is being concentrated and religious oversight embedded in lawmaking. Damascus had gradually applied religiously motivated policies with restrictions on swimwear and gender segregation on buses, both of which it rescinded following public backlash. With international recognition the government has become more emboldened as it has consolidated power. Example include the governor of Latakia banning state employees from wearing makeup in January 2026. On 16 March, the governor of Damascus announced that the sale of alcohol would be restricted to Christian-majority districts. This top-down bifurcation of Damascene society, paired with a lack of consultation with the public, caused protests and public rebuke from Hind Kabawat, the only Christian appointee in the government. Unlike previous instances, however, the Syrian government has only conceded that the sale of alcohol will be permitted in some hotels and restaurants and claimed that it did not mean to insult the Christian community. The Syrian Interior Ministry implemented intensified measures to secure churches and their surroundings on Palm Sunday. This failed to mollify Syrian Christians, many of whom view the new government with a mixture of caution and suspicion. The Syrian government’s core leadership originates from the now-dissolved jihadist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and its predecessor Jabhat Al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. During the civil war, members took part in sectarian war crimes such as the seizure of at least 550 homes and businesses from Christians living in Idlib province. Minorities currently hold just 5 of 23 cabinet positions in the new government with Christians, Alawites, Druze and Kurds unaffiliated with any political blocs and limited to less influential positions. The three most powerful posts—Defence Minister, Chief of Staff, and Head of Intelligence—are held by former HTS members with close links to Al-Sharaa. Since taking power, militants loyal to the new Syrian government have attacked the country’s Alawite, Druze and Christian communities. Following the June 2025 suicide attack on Saint Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus by jihadists, killing 25 during Sunday Mass, some Christians accused the government’s response of being disrespectful, citing that spokespeople initially refused to refer to the Christians killed with the typical Arabic honorific of “martyrs” and seeking to blame the entirety of the incident on the Islamic State, even though an HTS splinter group, Suraya Ansar Al-Sunnah, formally took responsibility. While the alcohol ban presents Islamist thinking as “public decency”, it implicitly singles out Syrian Christians as “indecent”. This is compounded by attacks on liquor stores by unknown assailants throughout 2025. For some, the new policy confirms some of their worst fears since the revolution in December 2024: that Islamist expansion into the public sphere will directly infringe upon their freedom, dignity and safety. On the evening of 27 March, the situation escalated further when communal tensions between Christians and Sunnis in the town of Suqaylabiyah, in northeast Syria, saw Sunni men attacking Christian homes and cars and looting businesses while calling Christians “pigs”. A shrine to the Virgin Mary was also exposed to gunfire. While internal security forces intervened and protected the town from further attacks, the turmoil followed a precedent of massacres against minorities by forces aligned with the government, where the perpetrators experienced limited accountability from the authorities. These actions have eroded trust in law enforcement and in the pro-government media. The violence has drawn wide condemnation from the Syrian Christian community. The Orthodox Patriarchate has officially condemned the attack, and the Catholics have cancelled all Easter celebrations outside church grounds. While protesting the violence in Damascus and Hama, Christians have refused to give interviews to Syrian media, claiming that state media misrepresents them. The government's deployment of armed guards to churches, meant to show the state is prioritising their safety, also serves as a reminder of how insecure the situation is becoming. To Syrian Christians, the alcohol ban and recent violence are warnings of a changing social and political order that leaves minorities exposed. As one Damascene commented, “We’ve never had it like this. [Christians] feel angry… even when the [Assad] regime was there, they never felt like that or saw this many armed guards around the churches.” Violence against Syrian Christians has been amplified by pro-Israel and pro-Trump influencers on social media, likely hoping to influence a policy change on Syria in the US. That trend has been followed by Israeli media. Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, used attacks on Syrian Christians to declare “The new Syrian president must be killed.” Playing on sectarian fears is a useful trope for Israel, having successfully capitalised on sectarian violence to secure the southern Syrian city of Sweida as a bastion of influence, acting as a protector to the majority Druze population who were subjected to massacres by forces affiliated with the Syrian government in July 2025. Damascus took little to no responsibility for the mass killings and the destruction and vandalism of Druze religious sites, despite evidence that the attack was premeditated and findings from the United Nations claiming that government forces and tribal fighters engaged in executions, torture and gender-based violence. These systematic failures by the Al-Sharaa government have opened space for Israel to increase distrust through media campaigns directed at the Druze, fulfilling its purported goals of balkanising Syria into weak and manageable ethnic enclaves. In this scenario, the IDF can maintain a buffer zone, creating conditions that attract illegal settlements in southern Syria. Although Israeli media campaigns on the Druze are far more prevalent, if Syrian Christians continue to feel threatened and disillusioned, Israel will likely attempt to highlight their plight to Western policymakers, hoping to advance its geopolitical interests. Syria is now closer to pre-war unification than ever before but in a climate where an uneasy, unequal peace is maintained many minorities fear the future. Every policy from the Syrian government that moves the country further from pluralism plays into the hands of the Israelis. It will see distrust weaponised and with that the risk of returning a shattered country to the brink.