Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 30.08.2026
Last week. Mustafa Khalil Abdi, commander of the Kurdish forces the SDF, announced the dismantling of the Kurdish military framework, approved its integration into the Syrian army, and thus partially removed one obstacle on the way to the reunification of Syria under Ahmed al-Sharaa.
This is not just a technical step of changing commanders and transferring military control. The Kurdish provinces, civilian administrative institutions, oil fields, and border crossings, which until now were under the control of the Kurds, have already been mostly under the control of government ministries, and the state is expected to take over all of them in the future. In return, the Kurds will receive recognition of the status of the Kurdish language as a national language and will be able to teach in the Kurdish language. The Kurdish New Year, Nowruz, will be recognized as a national holiday, and thousands of Kurds whose citizenship was revoked during the Assad era will be able to regain their citizenship after a test.
Mustafa Khalil Abdi was appointed as an adviser to President al-Shara. His former deputy, Sifan Hamo, has been appointed deputy defense minister for Kurdish affairs, and commanders in Kurdish forces are expected to gain respectable jobs and economic benefits. Kurdish fighters who integrate into the Syrian army are expected to receive combat lessons from Turkish instructors and adopt the state’s view of Israel as a hostile state.
Some 12,000 Kurdish fighters have announced their willingness to join the Syrian army, and some have already gone through the initial screening and registration process, but they make up only about a third of the total Kurdish armed forces. It is possible that some Kurdish fighters will establish independent militias. These Kurds see Turkey as an enemy state and have acted against its forces. They see the United States and Israel as friends of the Kurds, and are not willing to accept combat lessons from Turkish instructors.
On the civilian level, too, the road is full of obstacles. The Kurds number between 2 and 2.5 million people, and they are required to give up their autonomy.
Autonomy in Syria is not just an aspiration of the Kurds. Israel sees the Kurdish provinces in Syria as potential outposts for the dismantling of Syria, a base for gathering information on Iranian and Hezbollah activities in Syria, and as a brake on Turkish influence.
With the fall of the Assad regime, Israel saw the Kurds and the Druze as strategic assets that were supposed to torpedo the idea of a united Syria, which would be fully controlled by a “jihadist” regime that was subject to Turkey’s military and political auspices. This perception was reinforced by the military cooperation between the Kurds in Syria and some of the Druze militias in the Suwayda province in southern Syria, and the joint struggle waged by these two communities against the new Syrian regime at the beginning of the new regime. The massacre of the Druze last July, in which some 1,700 people, most of them Druze, were killed, and preceded by the massacre of members of the Alawite community, created the sectarian coalition of fear that served the concept encouraged by Israel. According to this view, Syria should be dismantled and Israel should be given a central status.
In his first speech as foreign minister of Israel, Gideon Sa’ar defined the Kurds as “our natural allies” and said, “In a region where we will always be a minority, our natural alliances will be with other minorities.” However, the position of the Zionist monster is in complete contrast to the policy of not only Turkey but also of the United States. From the moment Donald Trump embraced al-Shara in Riyadh in 2025, it was clear that the fate of Kurdish autonomy was sealed.
Israel also cannot rely on the Druze. One religious leader Hikmat al-Hijri has declared that the Druze see themselves as part of the State of Israel and even “share the same faith,” but he will not fight for the disintegration of Syria, contrary to Trump’s support for Syrian unity under Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Israel, which suffered a military defeat along with the United States, in the war against Iran also has lost the Zionist concept of an alliance with minorities to dismantle Syria. It may still be able to dismantle Lebanon, but the Lebanese army will not help Israel, and Hezbollah will continue to thwart the attempt to take over Lebanon.