Sa’ar urges global leaders to denounce ‘pure evil’ of Sharaa’s Syria after killings

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Monday called for international condemnation of the actions of Syria’s new Islamist rulers, after reports that over a thousand civilians were massacred since March 6 in the country’s Alawite heartland.

Israel has repeatedly declared its mistrust of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist faction that led the campaign that toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and that emerged from a group that was affiliated with al-Qaeda until it cut ties in 2016. Europeans, meanwhile, have cautiously welcomed the new Syrian government led by interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, easing sanctions on Damascus, though HTS remains a proscribed group.

“They were jihadists and remain jihadists, even if some of their leaders have donned suits,” Sa’ar said at a Knesset meeting of his New Hope faction, referring to Sharaa.

“The international community must come to its senses… it must raise its voice against the barbaric murder of civilians, against the pure evil of jihadists,” the foreign minister continued, according to his office.

Sa’ar noted his repeated warnings to world leaders not to trust the new regime and condemned the reported persecution of minority groups in Syria, including the Alawite and Kurdish communities.

“I warned against the sweet talk of [Sharaa] and his men and cautioned against acts of revenge and violence against the Alawite minority, as well as their intent to dismantle Kurdish autonomy,” he said.

Sa’ar said that “over the weekend, it was proven… that my warnings, unfortunately, were accurate. HTS operatives mercilessly massacred their own people — their own citizens. This does not surprise anyone familiar with their terrorist past.”

World leaders “must stop granting free legitimacy to a regime whose first actions are such atrocities,” Sa’ar said. “It must draw conclusions from what has happened and examine ways to protect minorities in Syria.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor of unclear funding, says 1,068 civilians have died since March 6 in “killings, field executions and ethnic cleansing operations” by security personnel or pro-government fighters in the coastal heartland that is home to the Alawite community of toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

According to Middle East Institute expert Charles Lister, as of Sunday, three Christian civilians have been killed in the violence, but there’s “zero evidence” Christians have been targeted.

Syria’s interim government on Monday announced the end of the campaign, which began after a surprise attack by gunmen from the Alawite community on a police patrol near the port city of Lattakia on Thursday.

“To the remaining remnants of the defeated regime and its fleeing officers, our message is clear and explicit,” said Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Hassan Abdel-Ghani. “If you return, we will also return, and you will find before you men who do not know how to retreat and who will not have mercy on those whose hands are stained with the blood of the innocent.”

Abdel-Ghani said that security forces will continue searching for sleeper cells and remnants of the insurgency of former government loyalists.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey have strongly backed Sharaa amid the violence, while former Assad ally Russia expressed deep concern and Iran said no group should be “oppressed.”

Washington blamed “radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis.”

Sa’ar on Monday defended the IDF’s continued efforts to demilitarize southern Syria, saying that Israel’s “security operations… both in [southern Syria’s] buffer zone and in destroying weapon systems that could have fallen into the hands of jihadists in Syria — have proven to be correct, important, and far-sighted,” adding that “Israel will not allow the emergence of a security threat on its border with Syria and will take all necessary measures to prevent it.”

A day after the fall of the Assad regime, Israel sent its troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights, where it maintains a military presence. The IDF has described its presence in southern Syria’s buffer zone as a temporary and defensive measure, though Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that troops will remain deployed to nine army posts in the area “indefinitely.”

During a meeting earlier with top ministers from Luxemberg Monday, Sa’ar called on Europe to condemn Syria’s Islamist rulers over the recent violence.

“Europe must make its voice heard loud and clear regarding the mass murder of Alawite and Christian civilians in Syria,” Sa’ar told Luxembourg Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel, according to Sa’ar’s office.

“We are determined to prevent what we witnessed this weekend in Syria from happening on our own border,” Sa’ar said after his Jerusalem meeting with Bettel, referring to the recent clashes.

“Syria is home to thousands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives who seek to ignite our border and create an additional front against Israel,” Sa’ar continued. “We are resolute in preventing a recurrence of October 7 across all fronts… We will not allow the formation of a jihadist threat on our border with Syria.”

Katz on Monday also called Sharaa “a jihadist terrorist of the al-Qaeda school who is committing horrifying acts against a civilian population.”

Israeli ‘nonsense’

In a wide-ranging interview Monday with Reuters, Sharaa dismissed Israeli threats and Katz’s comments as “nonsense.”

“They are the last ones who can talk,” he said, accusing Israel of killing tens of thousands of people in Gaza and Lebanon over the past 18 months in a war sparked on October 7, 2023, when the Hamas terror group massacred 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 from southern communities.

Sharaa told Reuters that the mass killings of Alawites were a threat to his mission to unite the country, and promised to punish those responsible, including his own allies, if necessary.

Sharaa blamed pro-Assad groups backed by foreigners for triggering the bloodshed but acknowledged that revenge killings had followed.

“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” he told Reuters from the Damascus presidential palace, where Assad resided until Sharaa’s forces toppled him on December 8, forcing the ousted ruler to flee to Moscow.

“We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us,” Sharaa said.

Sharaa also said that his government had had no contacts with the United States since President Donald Trump had taken office. He repeated pleas for Washington to lift sanctions imposed in the Assad era.

He also held out the prospect of restoring relations with Moscow, Assad’s backer throughout the war, which is trying to retain two major military bases in Syria.

While he blamed the outbreak of violence in recent days on a former military unit loyal to Assad’s brother and an unspecified foreign power, he acknowledged that in response, “many parties entered the Syrian coast and many violations occurred.”

“It became an opportunity for revenge” for years of pent-up grievances, he said, although he said the situation had since been largely contained.

Sharaa said 200 members of the security forces had been killed in the unrest, while declining to say the overall death toll pending an investigation, which will be conducted by an independent committee announced on Sunday before his interview.

Sharaa recognized the violence of the past days threatened to derail his attempt to bring Syria together.

It “will impact this path,” Sharaa said, but he vowed to “rectify the situation as much as we can.”

To do that, Sharaa has set up an independent committee — the first body created by him that includes Alawites — to probe the killings within 30 days and bring perpetrators to account.

A second committee was set up “to preserve civil peace and reconciliation, because blood begets more blood,” he added.

Sharaa declined to answer whether foreign jihadist fighters and other allied Islamist factions or his own security forces were involved in the mass killings, saying these were matters for investigation.

Syrians have circulated graphic videos of executions by fighters on social media, some of which have been verified by Reuters, including one showing at least 20 dead men in a town. Sharaa said the fact-finding committee would examine the footage.

Sharaa said Assad loyalists belonging to the 4th Division of Assad’s brother, Maher, and an allied foreign power had triggered the clashes on Thursday “to foment unrest and create communal discord.”

He did not identify the foreign power but pointed to “parties that had lost out from the new reality in Syria,” an apparent reference to long-time Assad ally Iran, whose embassy in Damascus is still closed. Tehran has rejected any suggestion it was involved in the violence.

Hundreds of thousands died in Syria’s civil war, and half the population was displaced. Western countries, Arab states, and Turkey initially backed the rebels, while Russia, Iran, and militias loyal to Tehran backed Assad in a theater for proxy conflicts.