Israel’s campaign in Syrian border area prompts fears it plans to stay: NY Times

Israeli soldiers have raided Syrian border villages, prompting nervous residents to huddle in their homes. They have captured the country’s highest peak, have set up roadblocks between Syrian towns and now overlook local villages from former Syrian military outposts.

The stunning downfall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad, closed a chapter in the country’s decade-long civil war. But it also marked the start of an Israeli incursion into the border region, which Israel has called a temporary defensive move to protect its own security.

Thousands of Syrians now live in areas at least partly controlled by Israeli forces, leaving many anxious over how long the campaign will last. Israeli troops have detained some residents and opened fire during at least two protests against the raids, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitor.

At least some Syrians now say they fear the Israeli presence could become a prolonged military occupation.

“We’re the only part of the country that didn’t truly manage to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime — because even as the tyrant fell, the Israeli military came,” lamented Shaher al-Nuaimi, who lives in the border village of Khan Arnabeh, which has been raided by the Israeli military.

Israel and Syria have fought multiple conflicts, but for decades, the border separating the two has been largely quiet. They last went to war in 1973, when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. Afterward, both sides agreed to create a demilitarized buffer zone patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers that served as a de facto border.

But when Syrian rebels drove al-Assad from power on Dec. 8, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel ordered his country’s troops to “take over” the buffer zone, home to a number of Syrian villages. He called it a temporary move to “ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border with Israel” amid Syria’s internal upheaval and after the Hamas-led surprise attack from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, that left some 1,200 people dead in Israel.

Israeli forces quickly seized the peak of Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in Syria, and advanced along the length of the buffer zone and beyond it. Around the same time, Israel said it conducted hundreds of airstrikes around the country targeting fighter jets, tanks, missiles and other weapons belonging to al-Assad’s government.

The continued military campaign, particularly the ground operation in the de facto border area, has prompted international accusations that Israel is violating the decades-old cease-fire. Several groups still hold territory in parts of the country in addition to the new Syrian government in Damascus, with Turkish forces in effect controlling areas along the northern border and a Kurdish autonomous region in the northeast.

The Israeli military is operating in the border area “now similarly to the West Bank, in that it can go in and go out anywhere it wants and arrest whomever it wants,” said Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a phone interview.

Israel also provided medical care to some Syrians inside Israeli-held territory during the decade-long Syrian civil war, including those from the border area.

“The medical treatment broke through some of the enmity that people felt,” said Dirar al-Bashir, a local leader in the border region of Quneitra.

But al-Bashir and others also said that if Israel’s operation became a protracted occupation, that would ignite further violence in a country exhausted by years of civil war. Israel already controls much of the Golan Heights, territory once held by Syria that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed in a move not recognized by most of the international community.

“We want peace, but the decision makers in Israel seem to think that they will achieve everything by force,” said Arsan Arsan, a resident of a Syrian village outside the buffer zone who has helped coordinate between UN officials and local residents. “If they push people into a corner, things will explode, just as they did in Gaza.”

Israeli officers have also entered villages to meet with local leaders and demand that they gather up all of the weaponry in their towns and hand it over to the Israeli military, according to seven residents. The towns mostly complied with the order, leading Israeli soldiers to take out rifles by the truckload, they said.

Israel did not respond to requests for comment on specific accusations by local residents. But the Israeli military said on Wednesday that its forces have seized and destroyed weapons that formerly belonged to the Syrian army, including anti-tank missiles and explosive devices.

Syrian residents and local leaders in the border area also said that Israeli military vehicles have damaged water pipes and electrical cables around some villages, causing blackouts and water cuts.

Turki al-Mustafa, 62, said there had been no running water in his town, Hamidiyeh, since Israeli troops entered the buffer zone. He said that troops had allowed some water to be trucked in, but had set up roadblocks around the town, ordering residents to enter and leave only at designated hours.

Cellphone reception has also become spotty in the buffer zone since the Israeli incursion, according to Ahmad Khreiwish, 37, a resident of the town of Rafeed, making communication difficult.

“Everyone is now living with this dread about the Israeli military,” he said. “We don’t want things to escalate between us. We just want safety and security.”

Some Syrians have protested the Israeli military presence, organizing demonstrations in at least four villages. Two residents of the town of Sweisa said Israeli soldiers had opened fire and injured several people during a protest there on Dec. 25.

“They were unarmed and chanting slogans against Israel’s deployment in the area,” one of the residents, Ziyad al-Fuheili, 43, said of the protesters. “At first, the soldiers shot in the air, but when the crowd kept marching toward them, they fired at the demonstrators.”

Israel’s military said that its forces had fired “warning shots” in Sweisa and that it was looking into reports that civilians had been harmed.