MOSCOW, July17. /TASS/. Karin Kneissl, ex-Austrian foreign minister and head of the Geopolitical Observatory for Russia’s Key Issues (G.O.R.K.I.) center at St. Petersburg State University, doubts that the current escalation between Israel and Syria could be settled quickly, despite the United States being in talks with both sides.

"Two US allies, Israel and the self appointed current Syrian government of Mr. Sharaa (before heading Al Qaida in Idlib in Northern Syria), are fighting each other. The Damascus based army bombed by Israel today is only one among 60 armed groups scattered across Syria. Its members have been involved in numerous massacres since they took power in Dec. 2024," she wrote on her Telegram channel. "Personally, I do not see a rapid deescalation. <…> The long list of issues will not be solved via some phone calls."

"We are not speaking about just two parties to a conflict that Washington calls a "misunderstanding". The other 59 armed groups with tens of thousands of professional fighters might use this momentum to enlarge their spheres of influence, drugs & arms business," she noted.

She drew attention to the fact that Israel positions itself as a country defending the Druze from Damascus. "PM Netanyahu is facing another coalition crisis, so time to bomb Damascus after having bombed Tehran during the last Israeli government stalemate. The Druze never asked the Israelis to get involved," she wrote.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier that the US administration expects the current escalation between Israel and Syria will be ended in several hours. On his words, the conflict is rooted deep in history.

On Tuesday, Israel struck the Syrian General Staff compound in Damascus. Before that, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that Israel would continue to strike Syria unless its government pulled troops from the Druze-populated area in and around the town of Sweida.

Since the change of government in Damascus in 2024, Israel has repeatedly voiced support for the Druze in the neighboring Arab country and expressed its intention to assist them in self-defense if necessary.

The Druze are a tight-knit ethnoreligious Arabic-speaking group living mainly in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan who adhere to a specific faith that split from Shiite Islam in the Middle Ages. Israeli Druzes live in Galilee in the north of the country and serve in the Israeli army and police along with Jews. However, after Israel gained control over the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967, most of the Druzes living there have preserved their Syrian citizenship. Syria’s Druze population numbers around 700,000, being the third biggest ethnoreligious minority after the Kurds and Alawites.