DAMASCUS: The leader of the Islamist-led rebels who seized power in Damascus criticized the Zionist entity on Saturday for its incursion into southern Syria this week but said his country was too exhausted for fresh conflict. Zionist troops entered the UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Zionist and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights last weekend in a move the United Nations said violated the 1974 armistice agreement.

“The (Zionists) have clearly crossed the disengagement line in Syria, which threatens a new unjustified escalation in the region,” said the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, who is now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa. But he added in a statement on the rebels’ Telegram channel that “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts.”

Since the overthrow of president Bashar Al-Assad by HTS-led forces on Sunday, the Zionist entity has also carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military assets. A war monitor said Zionist strikes early Saturday “destroyed a scientific institute” and other related military facilities in Barzeh, northern Damascus, targeted a “military airport” in the capital’s countryside, and also struck in the Qalamun area. Zionist Defense Minister Israel Katz has been destroying “strategic capabilities that threaten (the Zionist entity).”

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Saturday that Syria’s new rulers, who ousted the Lebanese group’s ally Assad, should not recognize the Zionist entity or establish ties with it. “We hope that this new party in power will see (the Zionist entity) as an enemy and not normalize relations with it,” Qassem said in a televised speech, his first public remarks since Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad following an offensive launched on Nov 27, the same day that a ceasefire between the Zionist entity and Hezbollah took effect.

The United States has made contact with Syria’s victorious HTS rebels, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday, despite previously designating the group as terrorists. Blinken’s comments, after talks on Syria in Jordan, came as Turkey reopened its embassy in Damascus, nearly a week after rebels toppled Assad, and 12 years after Ankara’s diplomatic mission was shuttered early in Syria’s civil war.

“We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken told reporters, without specifying how the “direct contact” took place. Blinken spoke after he joined Middle Eastern, Turkish and Western diplomats in Jordan for talks on Syria, and a day after nationwide celebrations at Assad’s ouster. Ankara has been a major player in Syria’s conflict, holding considerable sway in the northwest, financing armed groups there, and maintaining a working relationship with HTS which spearheaded the offensive that brought down Assad.

The Turkish flag was raised over the diplomatic mission in an embassy district of Damascus, in the presence of the new charge d’affaires Burhan Koroglu, an AFP journalist said. Blinken, on a regional Syria-focused tour, said the talks in Aqaba, Jordan, agreed on the need for an “inclusive and representative” government in Damascus. Jordan’s King Abdullah II similarly stressed, during the meeting, the need for “a free, secure, stable and unified Syria.”

UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen urged participants to provide humanitarian aid and to ensure “that state institutions do not collapse”. “If we can achieve that, perhaps there is a new opportunity for the Syrian people,” he said. A Qatari diplomat said on Friday that a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials for talks on aid and the reopening of its embassy.

Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011. Assad has fled Syria, closing an era in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed, and capping nearly 14 years of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions. A day before the meetings in Jordan, Syrians had celebrated what they called the “Friday of victory”, with fireworks heralding the Assad dynasty’s fall.

“We appreciate some of the positive words we heard in recent days, but what matters is action—and sustained action,” Blinken said. If a transition moves forward, “we in turn will look at various sanctions and other measures that we have taken”, he added. Pubs and liquor stores in Damascus initially closed following the rebel victory but are now tentatively reopening. “’You have the right to work and live your life as you did before’,” Safi, the landlord of Papa bar in the Old City, said police have told him.

Thousands of Syrians have swarmed the country’s notorious houses of detention over the past week, looking for evidence that might lead them to loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s repressive rule. And some former prisoners, like Mohammed Darwish, are also returning as free men to where they were once incarcerated, trying to find closure. “When the door closed behind us, we were plunged into the depths of despair. This cell was witness to so much tragedy,” he said, back at his former windowless cell in a Damascus prison.

Syrians also face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, runaway inflation, and sanctions that were imposed against his government. On Friday, the EU announced the launch of an “air bridge” to deliver an initial 50 tons of health supplies via Turkey. – Agencies