'What a Coincidence': Netanyahu Corruption Trial Adjourned as Israel Bombs Syria

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's testimony in his criminal corruption trial was cut short Wednesday as Israeli airstrikes pounded Damascus, the Syrian capital, despite considerable efforts by that country's rulers to appease Israel.

Al Jazeera reported Israeli strikes targeted the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters and the vicinity of the Syrian Presidential Palace, killing at least one person and wounding 18 others in a dramatic escalation that followed Israel's threat to intervene in clashes between government forces and Druze militants in and around the southern city of Suwayda. There are approximately 700,000 Druze—an Abrahamic religion descended from a branch of Shia Islam—in Syria, 250,000 in Lebanon, and 145,000 in Israel.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on the social media site X that "warnings in Damascus have ended—now painful blows will come."

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) "will continue to operate forcefully in Suwayda to destroy the forces that attacked the Druze until their complete withdrawal," Katz added.

The Syrian Interior Ministry subsequently announced a cease-fire agreement for Suwayda. Druze religious leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou confirmed the deal "to completely halt all military operations in Suwayda by all parties" and "to fully integrate Suwayda into the Syrian state."

Syria is the third country bombed by Israel within the past 24 hours. IDF airstrikes targeting the resistance group Hezbollah, including one on a camp housing Syrian refugees, killed 12 people in eastern Lebanon Tuesday amid the ongoing 21-month annihilation of Gaza that has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The attacks also follow last month's unprovoked Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran, including the country's civilian nuclear facilities.

The timing of Wednesday's strikes raised eyebrows, especially given Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa's painstaking efforts to avoid conflict with Israel. These include not retaliating for the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes in Syria since last year, cutting off arms supply lines to Hezbollah, and expressing a willingness to hammer out a peace deal with Israel—with which Damascus has technically been at war since 1948.

The conciliatory stance of al-Sharaa—who in 2012 created the al-Qaeda-backed al-Nusra Front to fight and ultimately overthrow the dynastic regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—prompted the Trump administration to lift long-nstanding sanctions on Damascus. The U.S. administration also removed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Nusra Front formerly led by al-Sharaa, from its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

As was the case with Israel's June bombing of Iran and alleged stonewalling of an agreement to end the Gaza war and secure the return of Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas, numerous observers accused Netanyahu of bombing yet another country in a bid to stay in power by forestalling a reckoning in his three cases of alleged criminal bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. If fully convicted, the prime minister faces up to 10 years behind bars.

"Israel could end the Gaza war, sit and talk with Syria and Saudi Arabia, and even manage its issues with Turkey through direct channels it already has," Middle East Eye Turkey bureau chief Ragıp Soylu wrote on X. "But Netanyahu chooses to distract its public from the corruption trial by keeping Israel in perpetual war with its neighbors."

Others accused Netanyahu of ordering the attack on Syria in a bid to keep Shas, the far-right ultra-Orthodox Jewish political party, from leaving his government.

"It didn't work. Shas is leaving anyway," Israeli-American academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim noted on X. "No one believes him and he is willing to kill people everywhere to get his way."

Netanyahu—who in addition to his domestic criminal trial is also wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—denies any corruption.

In language that echoes his own description of efforts to hold him accountable in the United States, U.S. President Donald Trump has called the cases against Netanyahu a "witch hunt" and called for their dismissal. In an unusual show of support, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee attended Wednesday's session of Netanyahu's trial in Tel Aviv District Court.

"This whole trial is wrong," Huckabee asserted, according to Axios.

Netanyahu stands accused of accepting more than $200,000 in gifts from wealthy businessmen, and of a quid pro quo in which he provided a telecom titan hundreds of millions of dollars worth of regulatory relief in exchange for favorable coverage.