After fall of Assad, PM says Israel is ‘transforming the face of the Middle East’
In first press conference in 99 days, Netanyahu says ousted leader was key to Iranian axis, which Israel is ‘taking apart step by step,’ touts his resistance to pressure to end war
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
A new chapter has opened in the Middle East with the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday at a press conference in Jerusalem — his first in 99 days.
Speaking to reporters, he claimed Israel was defeating its enemies “step by step” in a “war of existence that was imposed upon us,” and cited Assad’s Syria as a “central element of Iran’s axis of evil.”
On Sunday morning, Syrian rebels took control of Damascus after a two-week lightning offensive, ending 13 years of civil war against the Syrian government and over 50 years of Assad family rule.
Netanyahu highlighted the billions of dollars Iran invested in keeping Assad in power and the regime’s cruelty against its citizens, noting it “massacred hundreds of thousands of its own people.”
Assad’s Syria “fostered hostility and hatred” toward Israel, attacked it in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, was “a forward post of Iranian terror” and a weapons pipeline from Iran to Hezbollah, he added.
Referencing Israel’s 1967 capture and subsequent annexation of the Golan Heights, Netanyahu said that “today, everyone understands the great importance of our presence there on the Golan, and not on the foothills of the Golan,” adding that Israel’s hold on the Golan guarantees its security and sovereignty.
The premier also thanked US President-elect Donald Trump for “recognizing Israeli sovereignty” in the Golan in 2019.
“The Golan Heights will forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel,” he said.
Netanyahu repeated his previous assertion that Assad’s fall was the “direct result of the heavy blows we landed on Hamas, on Hezbollah, and on Iran,” and said that ever since the October 7 attacks, Israel has been working in a “systematic, measured and orderly fashion” to dismantle the Iranian axis.
In Gaza, he said, Israel was now acting “to bring down the remains of Hamas’s military capabilities, and all of Hamas’s governing capabilities,” and to bring back all the hostages.
Israel has been in direct conflict with Iran’s proxies since war erupted last year when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged across southern communities on October 7, 2023, slaughtering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages to Gaza.
Turning to Lebanon, Netanyahu stressed that slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had been the key link between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. He was the “axis of the axis — strike him, and you hit the axis severely.”
“The elimination of Nasrallah was a turning point in the collapse of the axis,” he argued, adding that “Nasrallah is no longer with us, and the axis is not what it was.” Israel is “taking it apart step by step.”
Hezbollah began launching cross-border attacks on Israel the day after the Hamas attack last year, firing rockets and drones at border communities and military posts, displacing some 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the country’s north. Nasrallah was killed in late September 2024 by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, as Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah, eventually launching a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.
In late November, the sides agreed to a ceasefire, which has broadly held, despite some airstrikes by Israel against Hezbollah operatives amid alleged violations of the truce.
“Iran set up a terror route from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, from Iran to Iraq, Iraq to Syria, Syria to Lebanon. In the south, they armed Hamas. Further to the south, the Houthis, who we’ve also hit hard,” he said, but added that the “axis still hasn’t disappeared.”
“But as I promised, we are transforming the face of the Middle East,” Netanyahu said. “The State of Israel is establishing its status as a focus of power in our region, as it has not been for decades.”
“Whoever cooperates with us, reaps great benefit. Whoever attacks us, loses greatly,” he said, adding that he wants to see a different Syria, for the benefit of both Israel and Syrians.
“We proved that at the start of the civil war when we built a field hospital at the border — and treated thousands of injured Syrian [civilians],” he recalled. “Hundreds of Syrian children were born in Israel. Even today, we [are] reaching out a hand to whoever wants to live with us in peace, and we will cut off the hand or whoever tries to hurt us.”
Turning to the IDF’s new positions in a buffer zone between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights, Netanyahu noted that he had instructed the military to take over the buffer zone and access points, “including what is called the Syrian Hermon.”
The IDF has stressed that the move, which saw Israeli forces take up positions inside the buffer zone for the first time since the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement, is a temporary one, but has acknowledged that troops will likely remain inside Syrian territory for the foreseeable future.
Looking further afield, Netanyahu said that Israel’s multi-front war has been successful because of three elements – the bravery of the soldiers, the resilience of the homefront, and his own and his government’s willingness to stand up to intense domestic and international pressure “to stop the war before we accomplished all of our goals.”
“Our actions are taking apart the axis brick by brick, and all this because we resisted, I resisted, the pressure” to halt the war prematurely, he claimed, adding that he has stuck to “the goals of the war until total victory.”
The goal of total victory — that “people derided,” he said — “is today becoming reality.”
Speaking about Hamas, he said the Gaza-based terror group is “more isolated than ever” after the fall of Assad in Syria. “It hoped for a unifying of the fronts. Instead, it got a collapse of the fronts. It expected help from Hezbollah — we took that away. It expected help from Iran — we took that as well. It expected help from the Assad regime – well, that’s not going to happen now,” he said dryly.
“The isolation of Hamas opens another opening to making progress on a deal that will bring our hostages back,” he said, promising that he and the government are “turning over every stone” to bring all the hostages home — “the living and the fallen.”
Negotiations for a hostage deal have stalled and failed several times over the last year, but were recently renewed following the ceasefire in Lebanon and other regional developments, along with US President-elect Donald Trump’s threat that there will be “hell to pay” if the hostages are not released by the time he takes office on January 20.
Israel believes that 96 of the 251 hostages kidnapped on October 7 are still in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces. Over the past 14 months, IDF troops have rescued eight hostages and recovered the bodies of 38.
“We were here before our enemies, and we will be here after our enemies,” Netanyahu concluded, cautioning that Israel still has “great challenges” before it but that he is confident that the Jewish state will prevail.
