Israeli forces raid a village on the Syrian border, causing nervous residents to flock to their homes. They have occupied the country’s highest peaks, set up barricades between Syrian towns, and overlook local villages from former Syrian army outposts.
The stunning ouster of Syria’s longtime leader Bashar al-Assad has ended the country’s decade-long civil war. However, this also marks the beginning of Israel’s invasion of the border area, which Israel claims is a temporary defensive measure to protect its own security.
Thousands of Syrians now live in areas at least partially controlled by Israeli forces, leaving many uncertain how long the operation will last. Israeli forces detained and shot some residents during at least two protests against the attacks. According to to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitoring organization.
At least some Syrians now say they fear the Israeli presence will lead to a prolonged military occupation.
“This is the only part of the country where we couldn’t really celebrate the fall of Assad because even after the tyrant fell, the Israeli army was still coming,” lamented Shaher al-Nuaimi, who lives in a border village. Ta. The capital of Arnabe Khan was attacked by Israeli forces.
Although Israel and Syria have fought multiple conflicts, the border separating the two countries has been largely peaceful for decades. The last time war broke out was in 1973, when Syria and Egypt invaded Israel on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. The two countries then agreed to create a demilitarized buffer zone as a de facto border patrolled by United Nations peacekeeping forces.
But when Syrian rebels ousted al-Assad from power on December 8, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his country to “occupy” the buffer zone where many of Syria’s villages are located. ordered the army. Amid the turmoil in Syria and in the wake of a Hamas-led surprise attack from Gaza on October 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people, he called it “an attack by hostile forces right next to the border with Israel.” This is a temporary measure to prevent the situation from becoming too widespread. In Israel.
Israeli forces quickly captured the summit of Syria’s highest peak, Mount Hermon, and advanced along the length of and beyond the buffer zone. Around the same time, Israel announced it had carried out hundreds of airstrikes across the country targeting fighter jets, tanks, missiles and other weapons belonging to the al-Assad regime.
Continued military operations, particularly ground operations in de facto border areas, have prompted international accusations that Israel is violating a decades-old ceasefire. In addition to Syria’s new government in Damascus, several groups still hold territory in parts of the country, with Turkish forces effectively controlling areas along the northern border and the autonomous Kurdish region in the northeast.
Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said in a telephone interview that Israeli forces are operating in the border area “similar to the West Bank in that they can come and go anywhere and arrest anyone.”
Some Syrians said they wanted good relations with Israel, citing shared hostility towards Iran, which supports the al-Assad regime. Israel also provided medical care to some Syrians in Israeli-controlled territory, including those in border areas, during Syria’s 10-year civil war.
“The medical care has broken down some of the hostility that people felt,” said Deilal al-Bashir, a local leader in the border region of Quneitra.
But al-Bashir and others also said that if the Israeli operation turned into a prolonged occupation, it would spark more violence in the country, which has been battered by years of civil war. Israel already controls much of the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights is a territory once held by Syria that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed in a move disapproved of by most of the international community.
“We want peace, but Israeli decision-makers seem to think they can achieve everything by force,” said Arsan Arsan, who lives in a Syrian village outside the buffer zone. “If you corner people, things will explode like they did in Gaza.”
According to seven residents, Israeli military officers also entered the village and met with local leaders, demanding that all weapons in the town be collected and handed over to the Israeli military. The town is said to have largely followed this order, with Israeli soldiers taking out rifles loaded on trucks.
Israel did not respond to requests for comment on the specific accusations made by local residents. But the Israeli military said Wednesday that its forces had seized and destroyed weapons, including anti-tank missiles and explosives, that once belonged to the Syrian army.
Syrian residents and local leaders in border areas also said Israeli military vehicles had damaged water pipes and power lines around some villages, causing power outages and water outages.
Turki al-Mustafa, 62, said his town of Hamidiyeh has been without running water since Israeli forces entered the buffer zone. He said the military had allowed some water to be trucked in, but barricades were set up around the town and residents were told to enter and exit only at designated times.
According to Ahmad Qurayish, 37, a resident of Rafid town, mobile phone reception has become unstable in the buffer zone since the Israeli invasion, making communication difficult.
“Everyone now lives in fear of the Israeli military,” he said. “We don’t want things to escalate between us. We just want safety and security.”
Some Syrians protested the Israeli military presence and organized demonstrations in at least four villages. Two residents of Sweisa town said Israeli soldiers opened fire during a protest in the town on December 25, injuring several people.
“They were unarmed and chanting slogans against Israel’s expansion in the area,” one resident, Ziyad al-Fuheiri, 43, said of the demonstrators. “At first, the soldiers fired into the air, but as the crowd continued to march towards them, they fired at the demonstrators.”
The Israeli military said it was investigating reports that its forces fired “warning shots” in Sweisa, injuring civilians.
Even before Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, Israel was concerned that Iranian-backed militias were gaining a foothold along the Syrian border. Israeli warplanes have regularly attacked Iranian officials and their allies in Syria as part of a years-long shadow war between the two countries.
The decision to send in troops reflects concerns about a surprise attack on Israel like the one that sparked the 1973 war, or the possibility of an attack on Gaza in 2023. This led to wars between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Israeli airstrikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria well before al-Assad’s ouster.
“Israel is closely monitoring the situation in Syria and does not intend to jeopardize its security,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said this month. “We will not allow another October 7th on any front.”
Syria’s new leadership has criticized Israel’s military actions. Critics from several Arab countries and abroad, including France, have called Israel’s actions a violation of a decades-old ceasefire and called for Israel to withdraw. Egypt denounced Israel “It seeks to exploit the current instability in Syria to expand its territorial control and impose a new reality on the ground.”
Israeli officials said they would only withdraw once “new arrangements” were in place along the border. Given the chaotic domestic situation in Syria, that could take months or even longer.
Israeli armored vehicles arrived in the small Syrian village of Kodana, just outside the buffer zone, just days after al-Assad’s fall, according to Mayor Maher al-Tahan. He said the Israeli military had instructed village leaders to broadcast a message over the mosque’s loudspeaker to Kodana’s approximately 800 residents, urging them to hand over their weapons.
Since then, the Israeli military has brought in generators and set up temporary barracks on a hill overlooking Kodana, he said. But most of Kodana’s wells are on those hills, so he said he and other residents have switched to buying expensive water that is trucked in rather than pumping water from underground. Ta.
“Israeli forces must withdraw as soon as possible,” al-Tahan said. “As long as they stay here, problems on both sides will continue to grow.”
