Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the picture of triumphalism since the fall of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 7. During a press conference yesterday, he declared that “a new chapter” had opened on Dec. 8 with Assad’s fall. Israel is defeating its enemies “step by step” in a “war of existence that was imposed upon us,” he proclaimed, citing Assad’s Syria as a “central element of Iran’s axis of evil,” Times of Israel quoted him as saying.
Referencing Israel’s 1967 capture and subsequent annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, Netanyahu claimed that “today, everyone understands the great importance of our presence there on the Golan, and not on the foothills of the Golan.” He claimed further that Israel’s presence there guarantees its security and sovereignty, and thanked U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for “recognizing Israeli sovereignty” on the Golan in 2019. “The Golan Heights will forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel,” he said.
Netanyahu said that ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Israel has been working in a “systematic, measured and organized fashion” to dismantle the Iranian axis. In Gaza, he went on, Israel is 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.
Turning to Lebanon, Netanyahu stressed that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was the “axis of the axis. Strike him, and you’ll strike the axis severely.” Nasrallah linked Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, he said. “The elimination of Nasrallah was a turning point in the collapse of the axis,” he argued, insisting that “Nasrallah is no longer with us, and the axis is not what it was.” Israel is “taking it apart step by step.”
“The State of Israel is establishing its status as a focus of power in our region, as it has not been for decades,” he boasted. “Whoever cooperates with us, reaps great benefit. Whoever attacks us, loses greatly.”
As for Gaza, “The isolation of Hamas opens another opening to making progress on a deal that will bring our hostages back,” Netanyahu claimed. He promised that he and the government are “turning over every stone” to bring all the hostages home—"the living and the fallen.”
“We were here before our enemies, and we will be here after our enemies,” he vowed.
