U.S. Syria envoy Tom Barak: Understandings reached through negotiations, not maps last (Reuters)
Afrasianet - Bakr Sedki - The surprise Israeli attack on Abu al-Duhur airport, in eastern Idlib province, has occupied media attention over the past week.
Trump's governor for the Levant and the Levant, Thomas Barak, returned to the forefront on the occasion, expressing his "concern" over what he called the "unnecessary" Israeli escalation.
He said Turkish warplanes were likely to take off to confront Israeli planes, similar to what happened in 2015 when a Russian Sukhoi plane was shot down on the Syrian-Turkish border line (see Was he making fun of the Turkish reaction?).
The man himself did not hold back in his angry rampage against Netanyahu, restoring the occupied Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty after Trump had given it to Israel in his first term. Israel immediately punished Barak for depriving him of the flow of intelligence!
It is as if we are in front of a bad play by more inferior actors. With a word from Trump, the land of Syria becomes Israel's, and then with a word from his envoy Barak, Syria returns!
The only party that is silent in this debate is Syria, which had an airport hit in the north, and verbally regained its sovereignty over the Golan.
Or at least that's what we thought, four days before the revelation of Asaad al-Shaibani's contact with the head of Israel's Mossad apparatus four days before the attack on Abu al-Duhur, in which the former provided the latter with a disclosure of his activities The Turkish military that raised Israel's concern at the airport.
Then, after the airstrike, a direct meeting took place in the Jordanian capital, under American arrangement, between al-Shaibani and the head of the Mossad, in order to "de-escalate."
This is understandable given the airport's proximity to the Turkish border, the fact that Turkey has a military presence on Syrian soil, and that it is the "mother of the boy" to the transitional authority in Damascus.
Thus, in parallel with the Syrian-Israeli meeting in Amman, press information about a Turkish-Israeli meeting mediated by Azerbaijan is being circulated with the aim of containing the escalation as well, or to understand the limits of their influence in Syria in order to avoid any possible clash in the future.
In other words, Tel Aviv gives itself veto power over any military activities in Syria that it considers to be an end to its air control. This means preventing the Damascus Authority from providing air defense systems or surveillance radars, and first and foremost, any warplanes.
While the previous perception of the Israeli red line was to limit Turkish military influence in northern Syria, it was inferred from the Israeli attack on the T4 airport near Homs in central Syria under the pretext that Turkish experts had arrived to develop it.
"The Israeli attack on Abu al-Duhur can be read as an indirect test of the axis of the Mecca Agreement, which Tel Aviv has not hidden its displeasure with"
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In January 2026, a meeting was held in Paris between representatives of Israel and the Damascus Authority, which was also indirectly attended by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
At the time, the American mediator announced that it had been agreed to establish a security coordination mechanism between Damascus and Tel Aviv that was supposed to prevent developments of the kind that happened in Abu al-Duhur, or what happens every day in the southern region of military incursions.
The aforementioned mechanism has not been formed, or Israel is reproducing its orders under the new conditions that have arisen from the war on Iran.
On the other hand, Netanyahu, who is about to decide the fate of his political future, is becoming more and more appetite, and he does not want to commit to any restrictions on his aggression, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or in Lebanon and Syria.
One of his cabinet ministers did not hesitate to threaten Turkey itself with an attack on Istanbul! The Israeli attack on Abu al-Duhur can also be read as an indirect test of the axis of the Mecca Agreement, which Tel Aviv has not hidden its displeasure with.
In general, since the Al-Aqsa Flood, the Turkish state seems to have adhered to the policy of bowing to the strong wind coming from Israel, and this is not only reflected in the avoidance of any response to Israeli provocations, but also in the ongoing political process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) under the title of "Turkey free of terrorism", which would not have seen the light of day without Ankara's fears that "Israel's arrival in the Anatolia," Erdogan said more than once.
Some analysts in the Turkish media even linked the Israeli attack to the progress made in the Turkish political process with the PKK and the progress in the process of integrating the SDF with the Damascus authority, considering that one of its goals is to sabotage these two operations.
In any case, the fluid regional situation caused by the "Al-Aqsa Flood" has not yet reached final stability equations. Until that happens, we will continue to receive surprises from the "fists of the neighborhood."
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