Per the story linked below and the assassination in Lebanon, Syria seems to be getting more aggressive. If it came down to it could Israel take on Syria by itself, and defeat them without US assistance?
Could they occupy Syria?
They probably could. But they won’t.
Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent. Not at this juncture. 
Occupy? That would be tough. Israel has only 6 million people and Syria is a country of 18 million. Defeat in a war? Yes, easily.
Possibly, though I’d be cautious at this junction of definitively laying either action at Syria’s feet. They may very well be involved with both, one, or neither. Regardless the Lebanese assassination is pretty much in an entirely different political sphere.
Really though this wouldn’t represent much in the way of increased aggression. Syria has been “tinkering” ( including arranging assassinations ) in Lebanon for decades now and supporting anti-Israeli actions for even longer. More just par for the course.
Absolutely. I sincerely doubt it would come to that however, as both Syria and Israel are more than cognizant of that fact.
Not with any degree of comfort or for very long. Since Israel relies so heavily on conscripts, the kind of massive long-term mobilization neeeded to support such an occupation would, I imagine, eventually be crippling. Israel is a small country and maintaining an occupation force the size of that of the U.S. in Iraq or larger ( larger - the U.S. has some allies and more neutrals in Iraq, Israel would have zero of either in Syria ), plus the continued maintainence of their security forces in Israel proper would be a huge burden. Not to mention that it would only magnify 10x Israel’s current domestic problems.
I can’t see any reason why they would ever even consider it.
- Tamerlane
Your point about the Israeli army being potentially weakened by the fact that most of the army is conscripts is interesting. Assuming this is a strategic fact, I wonder if this would (tactically) tend to increase the general violence of their military response(s) to a threat, since they can’t occupy and pacify, they pretty have to destroy the threat utterly and go home.
Slight correction: Israel’s standing army (called “Tzahal”) is mostly conscripts, but whenever major military operations are involved, the extensive reserves are called up. Generally speaking, Israeli male army veterans stay in the reserves until about age 45. This means about a month of reserve training or other duties per year, sometimes more.
The use of conscripts does not devastate the Israeli economy – they are in the army anyway. It is the extensive use of reservists that hurts the economy. In the 67 and 73 wars, the economy virtually came to a halt. Somewhat less in 82, but even the mobilization during the height of the intifada hurt the economy.
This is why Israeli military doctrine favors the devasting, conclusive strike – occupation of an entire hostile country would be inconceivable for Israel.
Remember: the southern Lebanon occupation was done in coordination with a South Lebanese Army, and the West Bank and Gaza occupation is done with conscripts, but, generally speaking, conscripts who volunteer for the elite or specialized combat units – Paratroopers, Golani, etc.
Well, that is one way to go about it, but it probably wouldn’t be what would happen in any exchange between Syria and Israel. Even if a full-scale war were to break out ( not terribly likely IMO ), the end result would most likely be the Syrian army getting severely mauled and falling back on Damascus, while international pressure mounted for an armistice. Which would come, sooner than not.
The Assads have never been quite the thuggish idiots ( well somewhat thuggish, but usually not idiots ) that the Husseins were. I’m quite sure they are well aware of the futility of them trying to fight Israel alone and would strive to come to terms as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile Israel has little to fear in a conventional sense from Syria. About the only trump Syria has is a sizeable surface-to-surface missile inventory which I imagine Israel would just as soon not provoke if it can be avoided due to potential civilian casualties in northern Israel. But the Syrian military really has declined steadily in both absolute and relative terms vs. Israel since the early 80’s, as the end of the Cold War eliminated their source of cheap military resupply. Russia still sells them stuff, but they demand COD ( or in advance ) these days and Syria has precious little cash to spare. So Israel has no real pressing need to crush the conventional Syrian forces and devastating Syria probably wouldn’t have much impact on unconventional actions unless it would be to increase them in the long term ( not to mention the public relations mess a scorched earth policy would cause ).
- Tamerlane