Israel’s Security Interests and a Kurdish State

Discussion of the Kurdish Question — whether, and how, and where, an independent Kurdish state can come into existence — and the role of Israel in furthering that goal, can be found here: “Why Israel’s security interests now depend on supporting the Kurds – opinion,” by Suzan Quitaz, Jerusalem Post, November 30, 2025:

Two significant outcomes of the Middle East Peace and Security (MEPS) Forum, held in the Kurdish city of Duhok in Kurdistan-Iraq: one is the show of unity between the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, and secondly, that “Syria will not return to being a centralized state.”

Masoud Barzani, the former president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, called for “not repeating the mistakes of the past” that led to Kurdish fragmentation and intra-division. It’s a key message to Damascus that the era of denying the legitimate rights of the Kurds in Syria is gone.

The three-day summit brought together distinguished world leaders, policymakers, academics, and experts at a pivotal moment for the region post–October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

The guest of honour, who caused a “social media frenzy,” was Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish-Syrian general of the American-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who was invited by KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani.

Abdi speaking at the MEPS summit and pictured sitting next to Barzani with the Kurdish flag seen in the background was shared thousands of times on all social media platforms.

It showed the KRG’s commitment to the continued survival of the SDF-run Kurdish region of Rojava in northeast Syria. Needless to say, this enraged the regime in Damascus. Its Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa, a former colleague of mine at the Qatari news channel Alaraby TV, stated: “Western countries [are] continuing their interference in Syrian affairs through their support for SDF forces, and the Duhok Forum is evidence of that.” It’s ironic that al-Mustafa talks about “Western interference” but ignores the Turkification of Syria post-Assad.

The Americans support the Syrian Democratic Forces — the Kurdish militia in Syria — because the Kurds provided valuable support to the Americans in fighting ISIS in Syria. And they continue to fight the remaining ISIS grouplets that exist in southeastern Syria. For a Sunni Arab like Hamza al-Mustafa, America’s helping the Kurds constitutes “interference” in Syrian affairs. In other words, he insists, please leave us, the jihadists now in power in Damascus, to deal with the Kurds as ruthlessly as we see fit.

President Barzani underlined that the Kurdish question in Syria must be resolved democratically and peacefully. Furthermore, Barzani stressed the importance of unity, cohesion, and coordination among Kurdish forces and political actors, and noted that the rights of the Kurdish people must not be violated….

How can the Kurds expect to obtain autonomy in Syria democratically when they are only 10% of the population? And how can they expect to do so “peacefully” when the jihadist regime of Ahmed al-Sharaa has already shown, in its massacres of Alawites in Latakia and of Druze in Swedia, that it is prepared to use extreme violence even against minorities that are no longer, or never were, a threat? When Barzani calls for unity, cohesion, and coordination among Kurdish military and political forces, that is what all Kurds now want. But instead of believing that they can obtain a separate state “peacefully,” as Barzani apparently does, most Kurds understand that to obtain their rights, including a Kurdish state, they can only do so through force of arms.

For many Kurds in Syria, who have already enjoyed many years of autonomy in the northeastern region known as Rojava, a continuation of that situation is not enough. Instead of “federalism,” they now want an independent Kurdish state. And that means war with the jihadist regime ensconced in Damascus.

He has allocated all key governmental positions to his former jihadi friends. To name a few, the Defense Minister post went to Murhaf Abu Qasra, previously known as Abu Hassan al-Hamawi, a key military leader in HTS.

Instead of reaching out to other groups, Ahmed al-Sharaa gave his two most important cabinet posts to members of his rebel group. The Defense Secretary post went to Murhaf Abu Qasra, and the Foreign Minister post went to Assad al-Shaibani, who operated for years within jihadist militias under several aliases, including Abu Aisha, Abu Ammar al-Shami, and Zayd al-Attar.

Meanwhile, according to Syria’s Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani, a jihadist and a former member of Hayat Tarir al-Sham, the “horrific massacres” in Syria of ethnic and religious minorities — that is, the Alawites in Latakia and the Druze in Sweida — are to be attributed not to the Syrian security services and veterans of al-Sharaa’s rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but to the diabolical Zionists. Of course all this is nonsense on stilts.

The Druze don’t think Israel was behind the killings in Sweida. They know the killers were Sunni Muslims, whom the government in Damascus sent to throttle the Druze. In fact, the Druze asked the IDF to help save them. Everything Al-Shaibani says is the very opposite of the truth.

Assad al-Shaibani wants the Kurds, and the Druze, the two minorities that during the civil war had gained a large degree of autonomy, to be “reintegrated” into the Syrian state, meaning they should give up that autonomy they achieved. Their militias would no longer operate independently but become part of the Syrian army. Stripped of their own military force, they would be rendered helpless against further oppression by the Syrian state.

The Turks have established military outposts inside Syria, mainly in order to keep tabs on the Kurdish SDF. But those Turkish troops also project Turkish power across Syria. Turkey is, after all, the closest Sunni Muslim state to what is again, with the Alawite regime now toppled, the Sunni Muslim-ruled state of Syria.

The Arabs who claim that “there is no such thing as the Kurdish people” fail to recognize that there is a distinct Kurdish language, distinct Kurdish folkways and folktales, Kurdish songs, and poetry, a Kurdish ethnicity quite distinct from that of the Arabs, the Persians, or the Turks. It is the Palestinian Arabs who do not have anything distinctive about them; in language and customs, they are just like the Sunni Muslims in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.

The Arabs want a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” that would replace Israel with a 23rd Arab state. Very free with their own demands for sovereignty, they would deny the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a sovereign state of its own, any state at all.

In clandestine and unofficial ways, Israel very likely has already been lending its support to the SDF, both by using its influence in Washington to promote Kurdish interests, and. by sharing intelligence with the SDF on Syria’s army. The Jewish-Kurdish alliance, an elective affinity, can only grow as the Kurds throughout the Middle East seek a state of their own, just as the Jews did, against the wishes of the Arabs and Iranians.