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      Syria After al-Assad’s Overthrow: What’s Happening and What Comes Next

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      Rebels are asserting control in Damascus as Israel and other countries carry out military operations.Follow live updates here.As a rebel alliance tries to create a transitional government for Syria, armed factions and outside powers are still fighting to fill the void left by retreating government forces.Kurdish-led fighters in northern Syria who are backed by the United States said early Wednesday that they had agreed to a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in Manbij, a city where they have been battling to fend off forces backed by Turkey.And the Israeli military has launched hundreds ofairstrikes against military assets across Syria in recent days, saying it was trying to keep them out of the hands of Islamist extremists.Here’s a guide to understanding where things stand in Syria, and what may come next.Here’s what you need to know:Who’s in charge?Who is Ahmed al-Shara?What is Israel doing in Syria?What is Turkey doing?What is the U.S. doing?What are the internal factions in Syria?Who’s in charge?Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, was the main rebel group leading the latest offensive, launching a surprise assault in late November from northwestern Syria that quickly led to the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. It is now leading the transition to a new Syrian government.Mohammed al-Bashir, a rebel leader affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, announced in a brief address on Syrian television on Tuesday that he was assuming the role of caretaker prime minister until March. 1. Mr. al-Bashir previously served as the head of the administration in rebel-held territory in the northwest.Approximate advance of the Israeli military into the buffer zone More

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      Trump Offers Confusing Clues on Syria

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      The president-elect faces hard choices about the country’s post-Assad future. His vows not to get involved might be hard to keep.President-elect Donald J. Trump will inherit a dangerous new Middle East crisis in Syria when he assumes office in January. But how he might approach a nation now controlled by rebels with terrorist roots is unclear, and may be decided by fierce competing arguments among advisers and foreign leaders in the months to come.There are many good reasons to expect Mr. Trump to take a hands-off approach to Syria, which erupted into civil war in 2011. One is Mr. Trump’s apparent disdain for the country, which he has branded a land of “sand and death.”Mr. Trump has also long railed against broader U.S. efforts to reshape former Middle East dictatorships such as Iraq and Libya, in what he calls America’s “endless wars.” As rebels entered Damascus, Syria’s capital, over the weekend, Mr. Trump posted on social media that the country was “a mess” and that the United States “should have nothing to do with it.”“This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved,” Mr. Trump wrote, in all capital letters.The sentiment was echoed on social media by Vice President-elect JD Vance, a fervent critic of American foreign policy overreach.Mr. Trump plans to nominate Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, as his director of national intelligence. She has spent years arguing that the United States has no business getting involved in Syria’s long-running civil war.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Strikes Military Assets Across Syria to Keep Them From Rebels

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      The Israeli military appeared to have unleashed more airstrikes across Syria overnight into Tuesday in an attempt to destroy weapons, aircraft and military facilities before the rebels controlling much of the country could take possession of them.Photographs from Syria on Tuesday showed sunken boats at a shipyard, crumbled buildings and the charred remains of a science research center that had been linked to the country’s chemical weapons program, according to the news agencies that distributed the images.It was unclear what had caused the damage in the photographs, but Israeli officials said that their country was striking weapon stockpiles in Syria, including chemical weapons and long-range missiles and rockets, to prevent Syria’s new leaders from potentially attacking Israel in the future.Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, told reporters on Monday that the leaders of Syria’s rebels “are people with an extreme ideology of radical Islam.” Israeli forces are destroying the weapons “in order that they don’t fall in the hands of extremists,” he added.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent group based in Britain that has tracked the civil war in Syria for years, said that it had documented 322 Israeli strikes in Syria since Sunday, when President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It said the strikes had targeted “warehouses, aircraft squadrons, radars, military signal stations, and numerous weapons and ammunition depots,” including some as recently as Tuesday morning.The group also said that Israeli forces had pushed further into Syrian territory, past a buffer zone set up by the United Nations.Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media on Tuesday that Israeli forces “are present inside the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border in order to protect the Israeli border.” He added that reports that the military was “advancing or approaching Damascus are completely incorrect.”Israeli military vehicles entering the buffer zone with Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday.Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe region between Israel and Syria has been fought over for decades. Israel captured the Golan Heights during a war in 1967 and annexed most of it in 1981. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. Beyond the Golan Heights, into Syrian territory, there is a 155-square-mile demilitarized buffer zone that has been patrolled by U.N. troops since the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War.Israeli ground forces advanced into that zone on Saturday, their first overt entry since 1973. They took control of the summit of Mount Hermon in Syria, a strategic point to oversee the region, as well as other important locations to give them control of the area, Israeli officials said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he had ordered the incursion to protect Israeli territory.“For the time being, we are there,” Mr. Saar said. “But we define these steps as limited and temporary.”Aaron Boxerman More

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      Amnesty International Accuses Israel of Genocide in Gaza

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      Israel rejected the charge — the first of its kind by a major human rights organization — saying it was “based on lies.”Amnesty International on Thursday became the first major international human rights organization to accuse Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza, drawing a rebuke from Israeli officials who denied the claim.Amnesty’s contention, outlined in a 296-page report, comes as the International Court of Justice, the principal court of the United Nations, is reviewing similar allegations by South Africa.“Israel committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” the Amnesty report said.The Israeli Foreign Ministry swiftly rebuffed the report, saying it was “based on lies.”“Israeli citizens have been subjected to daily attacks” on multiple fronts, said Oren Marmorstein, the spokesman of the ministry. “Israel is defending itself against these attacks acting fully in accordance with international law.”Amnesty International said it took into account acts by Israel between October 2023 and July 2024, including what it described as “repeated direct attacks on civilians” and extensive restrictions on humanitarian aid.Israel has maintained that it is waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and not civilians. It has also blamed the United Nations for mismanaging the delivery of aid and accused Hamas of looting it.The genocide accusation is acutely sensitive for Israel, which was founded in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Many Israelis argue that it is Hamas that should face charges of genocide after its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 were taken captive, according to Israeli officials.While the Amnesty report didn’t focus on the Oct. 7 attack, it said militants from Hamas and other armed groups conducted “deliberate mass killings, summary killings and other abuses, causing suffering and physical injuries.” It said war crimes committed by Hamas would be the subject of a separate report.Under a convention adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, genocide is defined as carrying out certain acts of violence with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”In the case before the International Court of Justice, South Africa has argued that inflammatory public statements made by Israeli leaders are proof of intent to commit genocide. Part of Israel’s defense is to show that whatever politicians may have said in public was overruled by executive decisions and official orders from Israel’s war cabinet and its military’s high command.Amnesty International said it used the 1948 convention to make its determination that Israel was committing genocide and it warned against narrow interpretations of what constitutes intent. More

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      Deadly Israeli Strike Hits Gaza Humanitarian Zone

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      The Israeli military said it was targeting senior Hamas militants in the area. Video from the scene showed the charred remains of tents.The Israeli military bombed a densely populated tent encampment on Wednesday night in an area of southern Gaza that it had designated as a humanitarian zone, saying the airstrike targeted senior Hamas militants who were operating in the area.Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reported that at least 20 people were killed and several others wounded in the strike on a coastal area in southern Gaza known as Al-Mawasi, where thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering. The death toll could not be independently verified.The Israeli military said in a statement that there were secondary explosions after the strike, suggesting “the presence of weaponry in the area.” It added that it took steps to mitigate the risk of civilian harm. Israel is trying to eliminate Hamas, which led the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza, and it says Hamas militants hide among Gaza’s civilian population.The Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said in a statement on Wednesday evening that its rescue and emergency crews were trying to extinguish a fire that engulfed the tents of displaced people after the strike.The aftermath of the strike on Thursday.Haitham Imad/EPA, via ShutterstockVideo taken in the aftermath of the strike by the Reuters news agency showed people walking through the mangled and charred remains of their makeshift tents on Thursday morning, with smoke rising from piles of clothes, mattresses and other belongings.“The flames of the missile were the cause of almost all of this destruction,” Ahmed Abu Shahla, a displaced man sheltering in Al-Mawasi, told Reuters. “There were two children here in this place who were completely burned.”Abu Kamal al-Assar, another displaced Palestinian who survived the strike, told Reuters that “it was a big and scary explosion” that turned the area “into a fireball.”Al-Mawasi was designated as safer for civilians by Israel’s military. But Israel has also said that it will target Hamas or its infrastructure wherever it believes it to be and the area has frequently been hit by strikes.The military has repeatedly ordered Palestinians in other areas of Gaza to evacuate to the humanitarian zone, despite protests from aid groups that the area lacks adequate shelter, water, food, sanitation and health care. More

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      Israeli Officials Welcome Trump’s Demand to Free Hostages Before Inauguration

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to take unspecified action unless the hostages held in Gaza are released before he takes office in January.Senior Israeli officials have welcomed President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demand that hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel be released from Gaza before his inauguration in January, and his threat that there will be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if they are not.Mr. Trump’s social media post on Monday did not elaborate on what action would be taken if the hostages are not released by Jan. 20, when he will be sworn in. Still, some Israeli officials appeared to be reassured by Mr. Trump’s remarks, which suggested the onus was more on the militants holding the hostages than on Israel to free the captives.“Thank you and bless you Mr. President-elect,” President Isaac Herzog of Israel said in a post on social media. “We all pray for the moment we see our sisters and brothers back home!”Mr. Herzog’s position is largely ceremonial. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen as the main Israeli decision maker in the war against Hamas in Gaza, has not publicly commented on Mr. Trump’s remarks, nor have leaders of the Israeli military.Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday that “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” if the hostages aren’t released before his inauguration.“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America,” he said. “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Syria’s Rebels Struck When Assad’s Allies Were Weakened and Distracted

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      Diminished support for the Syrian government from Iran, Hezbollah and Russia enabled opposition forces to take the initiative and seize new territory.For years, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was able to beat back opposition fighters with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Now, with those allies weakened or distracted by their own conflicts, rebels have seized the opportunity to shift the balance of power.The rebel fighters spent months training and preparing for a surprise offensive, but even they may not have predicted how quickly they would advance. On Saturday, the rebels said they had captured almost all of Aleppo, one of Syria’s biggest cities, and they now control a broad stretch of land in the west and northwest of the country, according to the rebels and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor.The timing of the assault and its success, analysts say, reveal the vulnerabilities of Mr. al-Assad’s once formidable coalition.The Syrian civil war started 13 years ago when peaceful anti-government protests were met with brutal crackdowns, escalating into a conflict between forces loyal to Mr. al-Assad and rebels. Over time, the combatants drew support and foreign fighters from regional and international powers.Iran, Hezbollah and Russia all sent help to the Syrian military. Hezbollah and Iranian-backed fighters battled alongside Syrian forces, Russia and Iran sent military advisers, and Russia carried out intense airstrikes on rebel-held territory.But today, Iran has been weakened by Israeli airstrikes, battlefield losses by its proxy forces — the so-called axis of resistance — and an economic crisis at home. Hezbollah, one of those proxy forces, has been battered and diminished after 13 months of war with Israel and the killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. And Russia is now nearing the end of its third year of a war of attrition with Ukraine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Former Defense Minister Accuses Israel of Committing War Crimes in Gaza

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      The comments by Moshe Yaalon were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said that they would hurt the country and help its enemies.A former Israeli defense minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, a rare critique from a member of the security establishment at a time of war.The comments by Moshe Yaalon came amid mounting criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza. They were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, saying that they would hurt the country and help its enemies.Mr. Yaalon served as the Israeli military’s chief of staff during the second intifada and as Mr. Netanyahu’s defense minister during the 2014 war in Gaza, the longest conflict between Israel and Hamas before the current war. But he broke with Mr. Netanyahu in 2016 and has since become a critic of the Israeli leader.At an event on Saturday, Mr. Yaalon denounced Mr. Netanyahu’s government for its actions in Gaza.“The path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse — look at the northern strip,” he said. He also said Israel was being pulled in the direction of building settlements in Gaza, a notion that is supported by far-right politicians in Mr. Netanyahu’s government.When the interviewer at the event asked Mr. Yaalon to clarify whether he thought Israel was on the way to carrying out ethnic cleansing, he responded: “Why on the way? What’s happening there? What’s happening there?”“There’s no Beit Lahia. There’s no Beit Hanoun. They’re now operating in Jabaliya. They’re basically cleaning the territory of Arabs,” he said, referring to towns and cities in northern Gaza where a renewed Israeli offensive against the militant group Hamas has caused extensive damage in recent months. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began in response to the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More