Syrian leader al-Shara hits back at Israel, vows justice for atrocities while blaming ‘foreign power’ & Assadists

Syria’s leader Ahmad al-Shara hit back on Monday at several Israeli ministers who called him a “jihadist in a suit” after around 1,000 Alawite and Christian civilians were killed in a spree of violence in the Syrian coastal region over the past five days.

In an interview with Reuters, the former wanted member of al-Qaeda and ISIS dismissed the Israeli statements as “nonsense.”

“They are the last ones who can talk,” he said, pointing to tens of thousands who were killed by the IDF in the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon over the past 18 months.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Monday repeated his warnings to the international community, saying that in recent meetings with European leaders, he warned them “about the sweet talk of Jolani and his people and cautioned them about acts of vengeance and violence against the Alawite minority, as well as their intention to eliminate the Kurdish entity.”

Al-Shara recently made himself the country’s temporary president, some four months after he led a rebel alliance mainly made up of Islamist terror groups who ousted the Assad regime.

After the regime’s collapse, he began using his birth name instead of the moniker “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani,” and embarked on a successful diplomatic initiative, gaining recognition and pledges of support from numerous regional and Western nations.

Israel’s leadership was immediately highly pessimistic about the new regime, taking military precautions and warning other nations about establishing relations with the new government that remains dominated by Islamists of al-Shara’s former group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

“This weekend, it was proven that our approach was realistic and that my warnings, unfortunately, were accurate. The HTS members mercilessly slaughtered their own people, their citizens,” Sa’ar said at a faction meeting on Monday.

“They were jihadists and remain jihadists, even if some of their leaders have donned suits. The international community must wake up; it must stop granting free legitimacy to a regime whose first actions are these.”

Sa’ar emphasized the world “must voice opposition to the barbaric murder of civilians, against the distilled evil of the jihadists, and draw conclusions from what has occurred, considering ways to protect minorities in Syria.”

Also Monday, Sa’ar called on Europe to “make its voice heard loud and clear regarding the mass murder of Alawite and Christian civilians in Syria,” during a meeting with Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Xavier Bettel.

The Syrian defense ministry on Monday declared an end to its military operations against an insurrection by militants loyal to the Assad regime that began last Thursday.

In its wake, atrocities and mass killings were committed against civilians in the majority-Alawite provinces of Tartous and Latakia, reportedly both by government troops and Jihadist groups that haven’t yet been incorporated into the new defense ministry.

Amid a torrent of contradictory reports and horrific footage documenting torture and murder, the full scale of the killings on the Syrian coast will most likely only be revealed in the coming weeks.

One of the only sources currently compiling these statistics, the UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), so far said 973 civilians died in “killings, field executions and ethnic cleansing operations.”

SOHR said that around 1,500 people have died in the violence overall, the rest being fighters belonging to the government’s forces and the insurrectionist Assad loyalists.

Faced with accusations of ethnic cleansing and intentional targeting of Alawites and Christians, al-Shara has vowed to “hold accountable, firmly and without leniency, anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians.”

Talking to Reuters, the president reiterated that “Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” vowing “punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us.”

Al-Shara mainly blamed a former military unit loyal to Assad’s brother and known to be close to Iran, as well as an unspecified foreign power for the violence.

However, he claimed his government lost control over the response to the insurgence. Al-Shara declined to specify whether his own troops or other groups were responsible for the mass killings, adding this would be determined by later investigations.

“Many parties entered the Syrian coast and many violations occurred,” he said, adding that the situation “became an opportunity for revenge” against the Alawite minority, to which the Assad family belonged and which held key positions in its brutal regime.