Syria is a made-up country whose borders were fabricated as part of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France, in which they set their spheres of influence in the Middle East ahead of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Since the 1970s, Syria has been under the control of the Alawite minority — the Assad regime — which until the 2011 civil war ruled the Sunni majority with an iron fist. The Sunnis have always seen the Alawites as a rogue sect that splintered from Shia Islam, so there is little wonder Syria’s Sunnis saw the Arab Spring sweeping through the region as their opportunity to topple the regime.

The animosity toward the regime, however, has long been sidelined, and the bloody civil war raging in Syria has become a war between Shiites and Sunnis. Shiite Iran strives to export the ayatollahs’ revolution, and its first order of business is establishing control over an area stretching from Iran, through Lebanon and Iraq, to Syria. To that end, Iran provides Syrian President Bashar Assad military, financial, and political support.

Tehran’s ambitions are countered by the Sunni states, which are well aware of the ayatollahs’ aspirations and the dangers they entail. They support the Sunni rebel groups in Syria and in Yemen — another country where Iran is trying to get a foothold by supporting the Houthi rebels.

The Sunni Islamic State group also seeks seizing control of Syria as the first step of cleansing Islamic territory from the infidels, ahead of imposing the Islamic caliphate’s rule worldwide.

Another player in the Syrian theater is Sunni Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime strives to realize two goals: toppling the Assad regime and preventing the Kurds from gaining independence. Erdoğan also dreams of restoring the glory of the Islamic caliphate — under his leadership — and has even been endorsed by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a worthy caliph.

Syria is the stage for multiple potential scenarios, which are hard to predict and analyze, especially when a victory by any of the players may see the fighting spread to other places in the already blazing Middle East.

The Alawite regime continues to steadily disintegrate: Assad is on the defensive and is losing ground in nearly every clash with insurgents; the port city of Latakia, a known Alawite stronghold, has come under fire; Hezbollah has lost hundreds of operatives without regaining control of any significant territory; and Iran has recently proposed a plan to end the fighting, which includes ceding territories to the rebels — a plan Islamic State and the Nusra Front are expected to reject.

It is also important to remember that all those involved in the Syrian theater see the Zionist entity as a target that must be annihilated. The Sunnis and Shiites both believe Israel’s existence is an abomination that must be erased.

For this reason, Israel must stand its ground and mount a forceful response to even the slightest attack. The players on the Syrian stage seek to destroy us, and under Islamic law, only a combination of a superior enemy and the weakness of the faithful may exempt the latter from the duty of jihad.

Israel must refrain from taking sides in the Syrian struggle, as even if the Assad regime comes to an end, none of the alternatives entities could be a potential ally.

Dr. Ephraim Herrera is the author of “Jihad — Fundamentals and Fundamentalism.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=13493