The headlines from Syria this week are being celebrated as a triumph of “territorial unification.” The new Syrian Sunni Islamist regime, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has successfully consolidated power in the strategic city of Qamishli.
Under the guise of a “phased integration” deal, the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria has effectively been dismantled.
The post-Assad honeymoon – a period of hope that a new Damascus would usher in a pluralistic, decentralized democracy – is officially over.
For Israel, the reality is even more sobering. The demise of the Kurdish buffer in the northeast does not signal a new era of stability; it heralds the birth of a militarized, Islamist “Sunni Crescent” that targets Israeli security with a fervor that the “predictable” Bashar al-Assad never possessed.
The end of the Kurdish buffer
For nearly a decade, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) served as a vital, if unofficial, partner in the regional fight against radicalism. Its de facto autonomy provided a geographic and ideological break between the Mediterranean and the Iranian border and, more importantly, a bulwark against Turkish expansionism.
That buffer has now evaporated. By moving Interior Ministry security units into Hasakah and Qamishli and forcing the integration of the Asayish (Kurdish security) into the state’s central command, Damascus has reasserted a monopoly on sovereignty.
But this is not the sovereignty of a neutral state. It is the consolidation of a regime dominated by former leaders of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group whose DNA is rooted in Salafi jihadism, regardless of its recent pragmatic rebranding.
The Ankara-Damascus alignment
The most alarming development for Israel is the burgeoning “Sunni Crescent” stretching from Ankara to Damascus. In the years following Assad’s fall in December 2024, many hoped Turkey and the new Syrian government would remain at odds over territorial control. Instead, we are witnessing a strategic alignment built on a shared hostility: the elimination of Kurdish aspirations and the rejection of Israeli “interference.”
Ankara’s consent to the Damascus offensive against the SDF was no accident. It was a coordinated double win for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has effectively solved his “Kurdish problem” by proxy while strengthening a Damascus regime that looks increasingly like a Turkish protectorate.
Israeli defense planners, who once viewed the decline of the “Shi’ite Crescent” (Iran-Hezbollah) as a strategic reprieve, must now contend with a rising Sunni axis that is equally, if not more, ideologically committed to the Palestinian cause as a pillar of its legitimacy.
The danger for Israel lies in the shift from the devil you know to the zealot you don’t. Bashar Assad was a brutal dictator, but he was a secular pragmatist. He understood the rules of the game; his primary goal was the survival of the Alawite minority. Consequently, the border on the Golan Heights remained the quietest in the region for 40 years.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his HTS-affiliated “clique” operate under a different logic. Their legitimacy is tied to a revolutionary Sunni identity. Although they have shown tactical restraint while consolidating power, their long-term goal is the leadership of the Sunni world – a position that requires a confrontational stance toward the “Zionist entity.”
As the Israeli-appointed Nagel Committee warned in 2025, a Turkey-backed Sunni force in Syria constitutes a new threat that is no less serious than the Iranian one. Unlike the Iranians, who were foreign interlopers in Syria, this new regime is domestic, Sunni, and deeply connected to the regional Arab street. It cannot be expelled like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; these Sunnis are the state.
Israel’s new northern front
Israel’s response has been characteristically proactive. By seizing control of the entirety of Mount Hermon and maintaining a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the 1974 ceasefire line, the IDF has signaled it will not trust the promises of the new Damascus.
But tactical control of a hilltop cannot substitute for a coherent regional strategy.
The fall of Qamishli is a warning shot. It proves that the “integration” of Syria is being built on the bones of the West’s most reliable allies – the Kurds. If the international community, led by a transactional US administration, continues to view Damascus through the lens of “counterterrorism” alone, it will miss the forest for the trees.
The “New Damascus” is not a partner for peace; it is the anchor of a new, aggressive Sunni bloc. Israel must now prepare for a reality where its northern border is contested by a regime that seeks to prove its Islamist credentials by succeeding where Assad failed.
The honeymoon is over, and the era of the “Sunni Crescent” has begun.
The writer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx