BEIRUT: Qassim Hamadeh woke to the sounds of gunfire and explosions in his village of Beit Jin in southwestern Syria last month. Within hours, he had lost two sons, a daughter-in-law and his 4-year-old and 10-year-old grandsons. The five were among 13 villagers killed that day by Israeli forces.
Israeli troops had raided the village — not for the first time — seeking to capture, as they said, members of a militant group planning attacks into Israel. Israel said militants opened fire at the troops, wounding six, and that troops returned fire and brought in air support.
Hamadeh, like others in Beit Jin, dismissed Israel’s claims of militants operating in the village. The residents said armed villagers confronted Israeli soldiers they saw as invaders, only to be met with Israeli tank and artillery fire, followed by a drone strike. The government in Damascus called it a “massacre.”
The raid and similar recent Israeli actions inside Syria have increased tensions, frustrated locals and also scuttled chances — despite US pressure — of any imminent thaw in relations between the two neighbors.
An expanding Israeli presence
An Israeli-Syria rapprochement seemed possible last December, after Sunni Islamist-led rebels overthrew autocratic Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran, Israel’s archenemy.
Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the rebels who took over the country, said he has no desire for a conflict with Israel. But Israel was suspicious, mistrusting Al-Sharaa because of his militant past and his group’s history of aligning with Al-Qaeda.
Israeli forces quickly moved to impose a new reality on the ground. They mobilized into the UN-mandated buffer zone in southern Syria next to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed — a move not recognized by most of the international community.
Israeli forces erected checkpoints and military installations, including on a hilltop that overlooks wide swaths of Syria. They set up landing pads on strategic Mt. Hermon nearby. Israeli reconnaissance drones frequently fly over surrounding Syrian towns, with residents often sighting Israeli tanks and Humvee vehicles patrolling those areas.
Israel has said its presence is temporary to clear out pro-Assad remnants and militants — to protect Israel from attacks. But it has given no indication its forces would leave anytime soon. Talks between the two countries to reach a security agreement have so far yielded no result.
Ghosts of Lebanon and Gaza
The events in neighboring Lebanon, which shares a border with both Israel and Syria, and the two-year war in Gaza between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas have also raised concerns among Syrians that Israel plans a permanent land grab in southern Syria.
Israeli forces still have a presence in southern Lebanon, over a year since a US-brokered ceasefire halted the latest Israel-Hezbollah war. That war began a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas.
Israel’s operations in Lebanon, which included bombardment across the tiny country and a ground incursion last year, have severely weakened Hezbollah.
Today, Israel still controls five hilltop points in southern Lebanon, launches near-daily airstrikes against alleged Hezbollah targets and flies reconnaissance drones over the country, sometimes also carrying out overnight ground incursions.
In Gaza, where US President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire deal has brought about a truce between Israel and Hamas, similar buffer zones under Israeli control are planned even after Israel eventually withdraws from the more than half of the territory it still controls.
At a meeting of regional leaders and international figures earlier this month in Doha, Qatar, Al-Sharaa accused Israel of using imagined threats to justify aggressive actions.
“All countries support an Israeli withdrawal” from Syria to the lines prior to Assad’s ouster, he said, adding that it was the only way for both Syria and Israel to “emerge in a state of safety.”
Syria’s myriad problems
The new leadership in Damascus has had a multitude of challenges since ousting Assad.
Al-Sharaa’s government has been unable to implement a deal with local Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria, and large areas of southern Sweida province are now under a de facto administration led by the Druze religious minority, following sectarian clashes there in mid-July with local Bedouin clans.
Syrian government forces intervened, effectively siding with the Bedouins. Hundreds of civilians, mostly Druze, were killed, many by government fighters. Over half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights.
Israel, which has cast itself as a defender of the Druze, though many of them in Syria are critical of its intentions, has also made overtures to Kurds in Syria.
“The Israelis here are pursuing a very dangerous strategy,” said Michael Young, Senior Editor at the Beirut-based Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
It contradicts, he added, the positions of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt — and even the United States — which are “all in agreement that what has to come out of this today is a Syrian state that is unified and fairly strong,” he added.
Israel and the US at odds over Syria
In a video released from his office after visiting Israeli troops wounded in Beit Jin, barely 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the edge of the UN buffer zone, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel seeks a “demilitarized buffer zone from Damascus to the (UN) buffer zone,” including Mt. Hermon.
“It is also possible to reach an agreement with the Syrians, but we will stand by our principles in any case,” Netanyahu said.
His strategy has proven to be largely unpopular with the international community, including with Washington, which has backed Al-Sharaa’s efforts to consolidate his control across Syria.
Israel’s operations in southern Syria have drawn rare public criticism from Trump, who has taken Al-Sharaa, once on Washington’s terror list, under his wing.
“It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social after the Beit Jin clashes.
Syria is also expected to be on the agenda when Netanyahu visits the US and meets with Trump later this month.
Experts doubt Israel will withdraw from Syria anytime soon — and the new government in Damascus has little leverage or power against Israel’s much stronger military.
“If you set up landing pads, then you are not here for short-term,” Issam Al-Reiss, a military adviser with the Syrian research group ETANA, said of Israeli actions.
Hamadeh, the laborer from Beit Jin, said he can “no longer bear the situation” after losing five of his family.
Israel, he said, “strikes wherever it wants, it destroys whatever it wants, and kills whoever it wants, and no one holds it accountable.”