1) MEMRI reports on recent events which so far seem to have escaped the attention of the BBC and other British media outlets.
“The Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces recently launched a military operation of unprecedented scope and intensity against the “Jenin Brigade” Palestinian terror militia, which is based in the Jenin refugee camp and comprises mainly members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Like other terror militias in the northern West Bank, the Jenin Brigade challenges the authority of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and acts to undermine the PA and establish infrastructure for terrorism and armed struggle against Israel from within the West Bank, with Iranian support. […]
Against this backdrop, on December 14, 2024, the 37th anniversary of Hamas’ establishment, the PA announced “Operation Homeland Defense,” aimed at regaining control of the Jenin refugee camp “at all costs,” as Mahmoud Abbas put it.”
2) At Commentary Magazine, Jonathan Schanzer and David Daoud discuss ‘A New Era of Hezbollah Defeat’.
“The dreaded Third Lebanon War is over. The destructive capabilities that Hezbollah possessed before the war never came to fruition. Instead, Hezbollah took a beating. To add insult to injury, the group watched passively as Bashar al-Assad collapsed, bringing Hezbollah’s weapons primary smuggling routes down with it. The group is thus battered badly, with immediate prospects of regaining its strength significantly complicated.”
3) At the Moshe Dayan Center, Brandon Freedman analyses ‘Syria After Asad: A Conflict Without Closure’.
“Jolani wants to reunite Syria and end foreign (Iranian) domination. But modern Syria does not have a strong track-record of unity. Before the 54-year Asad era, Syria was plagued by instability and domestic upheaval. And foreign influence and interference were features of its domestic politics.
Turkey, Jolani’s patron and sponsor, has outmaneuvered Russia and Iran, who were weakened and distracted by the wars with Ukraine and Israel. Turkey claims it seeks to ensure “Syria’s territorial integrity” and its “long-term transformation into a democratic, unitary state, far from any ambitions of occupation,” but it occupies large chunks of Syrian territory in the north and its military is working to roll-back Kurdish control over eastern Syria. One could forgive an oversimplified and mistaken reading of this past week’s events as Syria trading Iran’s Shiʿi patronage for Turkey’s Sunni patronage. The reality, of course, is far more complex.”
4) Jonathan Spyer looks at ‘What Al-Jolani’s Past Can Reveal About Syria’s Future’.
“In terms of the ideas that underlie HTS’s administration in Idleb, the organisation’s highest religious authority is Abd al-Rahim Atoun. Atoun’s attitudes toward governance may be gleaned from the fact that in September 2021 he delivered a lecture in Idleb entitled ‘Jihad and Resistance in the Islamic World: the Taliban as a Model’.
Elsewhere, in reference to the 7 October attacks of last year, Atoun said that ‘what the mujahideen are doing for the sake of Allah Almighty in the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa is the greatest act of Islam in this era, and it is a blessed jihad to repel aggression and defend religion’. Atoun compares HTS’s march from Idleb to Damascus to the 7 October attacks, and requests ‘the Almighty to disgrace the Jews, suppress them, and curse them and those who support and back them against the mujahideen’.”
5) At The Long War Journal, Bill Roggio outlines ‘Hayat Tahrir al Sham’s terror network in Syria’.
“Though Jolani’s group has periodically arrested Al Qaeda-linked individuals in Syria and sometimes clashed with Hurras al Din, Al Qaeda’s current branch in Syria, the idea that HTS has “no affiliation to any external entity” is easily debunked by looking at the foreign jihadist groups that either operate under HTS’s banner or routinely fight alongside it as an organization ‘approved’ by HTS.”
