DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- Just days after Syria’s interim foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani groveled before Israeli intelligence chiefs in Jordan—smiling for cameras while Mossad’s Roman Gofman dictated terms—Israeli artillery rained down on the outskirts of Damascus yet again.
Four shells slammed into the Bat al-Warda hill area near Beit Jinn on Thursday, the second such attack in less than a week. No Syrian statement of condemnation that carried any weight. Just the familiar silence of a regime that has traded national pride for survival.
Welcome to the new Syria under Abu Muhammad al-Jolani—the former Al-Qaeda emir turned “President Ahmad al-Sharaa”—whose administration has become a grotesque spectacle of submission to the very power systematically dismantling what remains of Syrian sovereignty.
Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Israel has torn up the 1974 disengagement agreement, seized the UN-patrolled buffer zone, occupied Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Shekh)’s Syrian side, and established at least ten permanent military bases in the south. Israeli forces conduct near-daily raids, arrests, and demolitions in Quneitra and Daraa. They have destroyed 80% of Syria’s air force.
He sends his foreign minister to sit across from Mossad in Amman. He publicly announces that his government is “working with several countries” to reach a “security agreement” with Israel. He speaks of “comprehensive peace” while Israeli bulldozers flatten Syrian villages.
This is not diplomacy. This is a national humiliation dressed in Western-tailored suits.
The Jordan meeting was supposed to “lower the temperature.” Instead, Israel interpreted it as weakness—and responded with more shells. More occupation. More demands.
Analysts warn that Israel is now pushing for permanent “unliveable buffer zones” along Syria’s borders—a policy of ethnic cleansing through demolition, eviction, and agricultural destruction. The same playbook used in Gaza and Lebanon is being rolled out in Syria’s south.
Yet Jolani’s regime continues its pathetic dance, hoping that U.S. mediation will somehow produce a different outcome. Special Envoy Tom Barrack condemned Israel’s strikes as “unnecessary escalation”—but the Americans still facilitate the talks, still legitimize the occupation, still treat the invaders and the invaded as equal negotiating partners.
The hard truth is that Jolani is in no position to bargain. His regime is broke, its military gutted, its survival entirely dependent on foreign goodwill. He has nothing to offer but capitulation.
And capitulate he does.
Syria, once the beating heart of Arab nationalism under Assad—for all his brutality—now watches its leader negotiate the terms of his own country’s dismemberment. The Golan Heights, occupied since 1967, is now effectively annexed in all but name. Israeli tanks patrol Syrian roads. Israeli shells fall on Syrian soil.
And Jolani’s only response is to beg for more talks.
This is the final, ugly humiliation of a nation that has endured thirteen years of war, only to be sold out by a former terrorist who reinvented himself as a statesman. The Syrian people deserve better than this craven spectacle. They deserve leaders who resist, not grovel.
But in the Palace of the People, the only thing that matters is the throne. And if holding it means kissing the ring of the occupier, Jolani seems more than willing to bend the knee.
The shells will keep falling. The occupation will keep expanding. And the regime will keep talking—endlessly, uselessly—as Syria bleeds out.