The claim that Israel is engineering regional hegemony through destabilization is a propaganda trope that collapses under scrutiny. Every significant Israeli military action in Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 has a traceable, publicly stated, and strategically coherent security rationale — verified by Western policy institutes and open-source intelligence. Accusations of "expansionism" require evidence of territorial annexation ambition or deliberate state-wrecking for political gain; what the evidence actually shows is a democracy responding, sometimes aggressively, to an explosive security vacuum on its northern border.
The Documented Security Drivers
When Assad's government collapsed in December 2024, Syria's vast military arsenal — ballistic missiles, air defense systems, chemical weapons production facilities, and naval assets — became immediately vulnerable to seizure by jihadist factions, including remnants of ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Israel launched Operation Bashan Arrow, conducting hundreds of strikes to destroy most of Syria's strategic military infrastructure before it could be repurposed by hostile actors. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a centrist think tank with no pro-Israel editorial agenda, confirmed that this disarmament campaign was "mostly bloodless" and specifically targeted weapons depots, military aircraft, naval assets, and chemical-weapons production facilities.
Simultaneously, Israel moved forces into the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) zone — the 150-square-mile buffer area established by the 1974 disengagement agreement separating Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights. Israel's legal position, backed by its security establishment, is that the 1974 agreement became inoperative upon Assad's removal, as the accord was concluded with a government that no longer exists. Establishing nine military outposts in that zone and conducting disarmament operations in border villages up to ten miles inside Syrian territory is not conquest — it is the creation of a security buffer analogous to actions taken by NATO states when state authority collapses on their borders.
The Iranian dimension is also critical context. For over a decade prior to Assad's fall, Israel had been striking IRGC formations, Hezbollah weapons convoys, and precision-guided missile production facilities inside Syria — all with the explicit goal of interdicting the "land bridge" Tehran used to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon. This was not a new expansionist posture; it was a sustained counter-proliferation campaign that prevented Hezbollah from receiving game-changing weapons systems. The October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre made Israel acutely aware of what failure to interdict weapons and preempt attacks looks like in practice.
On the Turkish military base question, the allegation that Israel's concerns are pretextual is flatly contradicted by open-source reporting and policy analysis. Turkey's transitional agreements with Syria's new government include plans for an airbase in central Syria hosting Turkish F-16 fighter jets, the deployment of Turkish-backed Syrian National Army factions into the unified Syrian military, and the appointment of Turkish nationals and pro-Ankara commanders — some sanctioned by the United States for human rights abuses — to senior positions within Syria's restructured armed forces. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies documented that one Turkish-proxy commander, Mohammad al-Jasem (Abu Amsha), sanctioned by the US for abuses against Kurdish populations, was appointed to command the Hama Division. Another, Sayf Abu Bakr, reportedly appeared in an ISIS propaganda video before being appointed to command the 76th Division. For Israel to treat the prospect of F-16-capable Turkish air bases operated by such a military structure, kilometers from its northern border, as a security concern is not paranoia — it is elementary threat assessment.
Historical Context: Why This Myth Exists
The "expansionism" narrative draws on a broader delegitimization framework that reframes every Israeli defensive action as aggression. It conflates Israel's 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights — seized in the 1967 Six-Day War after Syria used it to shell Israeli communities for 19 years — with a supposed appetite for indefinite territorial expansion across the Arab world. This conflation is historically illiterate. Israel has repeatedly withdrawn from territories it has occupied: it evacuated the Sinai Peninsula as part of the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, and unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005. A state with genuine hegemonic expansionist ambitions does not voluntarily relinquish territory.
The current Syrian operations are also explicitly framed by Israeli officials as temporary and condition-based. Israel's objectives, as articulated by its security establishment and analyzed by the Washington Institute, include preventing Iranian resupply routes, protecting Jordanian stability, neutralizing jihadist threats, and maintaining freedom of action to defend itself — not the permanent occupation or annexation of Syrian land. There is no Israeli settlement enterprise in Syria, no administrative absorption of Syrian population centers, and no political roadmap for Syrian territorial integration.
The myth also conveniently ignores who actually destabilized Syria: the Assad regime's 13-year war against its own population, Iran's military intervention on Assad's behalf, Russia's air campaign that kept a war criminal in power, and Hezbollah's deployment of thousands of fighters into Syrian territory. Israel did not cause the Syrian civil war. It is managing the consequences of that war's resolution for its own citizens' safety.
Conclusion: Defensive Realism vs. Manufactured Aggression
Labeling Israel's Syria operations as "expansionist hegemony" requires ignoring all documented evidence of Israel's security motivations, all verifiable facts about the Turkish military build-up in Syria, and all historical record of Israel's willingness to trade land for genuine peace. The myth is harmful not merely because it is false, but because it inverts moral responsibility — placing the burden of accusation on the democratic state responding to threats rather than on the actors generating those threats. It is a rhetorical weapon deployed by Iran, its proxies, and aligned media ecosystems to delegitimize Israel's right to self-defense at precisely the moment when that defense is most urgently required.