The trail of an Israeli warplane was visible in the sky, on the approach to the southern Syrian village of Chajara, where Wissam, a 41-year-old mother of six, lay on a cushion, waiting to undergo surgery to remove shrapnel from her body. The surgery will cost €2,000(€1,800), money her family is trying to raise through donations from neighbours.
Wissam said about 11 people – children, men and women – were farming in the upper part of a valley by the nearby village of Koya on Tuesday, March 25th, when the Israeli attacks began. “We were far away, they just bombed us immediately ... We are three sisters-in-law that were injured and one man,” she said. One of the women lost a leg, while shrapnel struck another in her pelvis. At least six people were killed.
In the valley in Daraa governorate’s western countryside where the attacks happened, spattered blood still shone red on the rocks.
During Syria’s long war, this region experienced a brutal siege by the Assad regime, and the rise and fall of theIslamic State terror group. Daraa city, about 40km from Koya, is known as the “cradle” of Syria’s revolution, which began in 2011. Now residents are grappling with a new challenge: incursions from Israel.
After the March 25th strikes on Koya, male elders gathered at the local mosque to pay their respects to those killed, as locals struggled to comprehend what was happening to their homeland. “We are here gathering because we want to give our condolences and stand with the people,” said village elder Mahmoud Musalam.
Travelling through southern Syria last week, The Irish Times heard stories of detentions of Syrian civilians, seizures and confiscations of land and property, regular Israeli patrols, and also softer approaches, such as the distribution by the Israelis of food baskets – all inside Syrian territory.
An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said the military was operating in Syria “in order to protect the residents of the Golan Heights” and would ”continue to act as necessary to defend the state of Israel and its citizens, in accordance with international law”.
In Koya, Israeli forces had “acted to neutralise the threat posed” by “several terrorists who opened fire at them”, the spokesperson said. Some locals told The Irish Times Syrian armed men had come to the area where the attacks happened, but suggested they were attempting to protect Syrian civilians from Israeli soldiers.
* * *
In December, the first days after the fall of the Assad regime, Israel launched close to 500 air strikes across Syria, saying it wanted to prevent weapons stockpiles and military installations from being used by “terrorist elements”. Its forces also launched a land invasion, seizing a demilitarised, UN-monitored buffer zone in the Golan Heights, then moving beyond it.
Charles Lister, a senior fellow and head of the Syria Initiative at the Middle East Institute, said the killings at Koya followed 70 previous Israeli incursions into Syria over the last few months.
Aware of how fractured Syria is, the interim government in Damascus is attempting to unify the country and its armed forces. But Israel says it will “not allow” new government forces to move south of Damascus, with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu saying in February that he “demand[s] full demilitarisation of southern Syria”.
This comes despite new president Ahmed al-Sharaa – whose family come from the occupied Golan Heights – saying he will not let Syria be used as a launch pad for attacks on Israel and that he is committed to the 1974 agreement between the countries.
“The IDF is prepared to stay in Syria for an unlimited amount of time,” said Israeli defence minister Israel Katz during a visit on March 12th to Mount Hermon, Syria’s highest peak, located close to the border with Lebanon, and 40km from the capital, Damascus.
On Wednesday, Israel launched another wave of air strikes targeting “military capabilities” and infrastructure sites in Damascus, Hama and Homs, in what the new Syrian government called a violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty, and “a deliberate attempt to destabilise”.
While an IDF spokesman also said Israeli forces “eliminate[d]” several “terrorists” whom he said had opened fire on Israeli forces in Syria’s south, Daraa governorate officials said at least nine civilians were killed during the deepest Israeli incursion yet, sparking “widespread public mobilisation and anger”.
* * *
In a temporary home his family had moved to for safety, Naif Al Ali (68) held up a photograph of a bloody stump: what remained of a 40-year-old relative’s leg after the Koya attacks. Another injured victim, his daughter Malak Al Ali (27), lay nearby.
“This is their policy, they are expansionists,” he said of the Israelis. “Here the land is fertile, there is water, agriculture, sources of electricity, so they want to occupy it. The new government will not do anything, they don’t have power.”
Ali and other Syrians who spoke to The Irish Times said they want the United Nations to step in and protect them. More than 1,100 UN peacekeepers are already deployed in the nearby Golan Heights, the UN’s website says: the UN Disengagement Observer Force was established in 1974. Two thirds of the Golan Heights was in effect annexed by Israel in 1981, though most of the world still considers it Syrian territory.
“We will never leave our land, [even if] Israel or the US or anyone comes, we will not leave,” said Ali.
“[Israel] say, always, they have to protect their borders. They should protect their borders from their country, not come to our country to protect their borders,” complained Bashar, Wissam’s brother who – like some others – asked to go only by his first name due to anxiety over the consequences of speaking out.
“I want to convey a message,” he said. “Here we are in our land. We didn’t go to them. We are not assaulting them. They are coming to us. They are assaulting us.” Referring to the fall of the Assad regime, he added: “The Israelis sabotaged even the one moment of joy we have felt.”
* * *
Speaking to people in southern Syria, it becomes clear there is suspicion and conflicting information about which Syrians might be helping Israel, or accepting cash or other benefits. Israeli advances come at a time of desperation, when locals are worried about drought and daily grinding hardships. “They have suffered from war for 14 years, they are ready to do a deal with the devil to improve their financial situation,” said one man.
Israeli food parcels have been distributed to roughly a dozen villages, he said, containing goods including flour, milk, canned food, biscuits, rice, sugar and vitamins, worth in total about $140 (€127). While many do not want to be publicly seen accepting them, they will take the parcels under cover of darkness. The packaging has Hebrew language labels, while the packages are marked with Arabic writing translating as “the good neighbour”, the man said. An Israeli spokesperson confirmed they offered both “medical assistance” and “humanitarian food packages”.
In Al-Nasiriya, on the administrative border between the governorates of Daraa and Quneitra, The Irish Times saw what reportedly used to be a Russian military base, said to have been destroyed by Israeli soldiers within the previous week.
Barbed wire still surrounded cracked concrete and an upturned vehicle. An IDF spokesperson denied that troops are present in Al-Nasiriya and Daraa at all. But in Ain Dakar, Daraa, there was another checkpoint, which locals said Israeli forces had destroyed days before.
* * *
In Kodana, a quiet village in the southwestern Quneitra governorate, an unmanned checkpoint blocks a road. Locals, who did not want to be named, said Israelis had mounted cameras on it, and anyone who approached risks being tracked down. They said a shepherd had had his motorbike confiscated for passing by, with one adding they were nervous because “we are not allowed to talk to media”. Five people were recently detained from one house, they said.
“We got rid of [Bashar al-] Assad and we got much worse than Assad. The same day that Assad fell, at 5pm they were here,” said one man.
He also accused the Israelis of seizing sheep, and barring people from their land, forcing him to sell cattle he can no longer graze.
He said Israeli soldiers once shot guns recklessly from another checkpoint further away, with a bullet damaging a car. They also shot machine guns into a nearby dam, he alleged.
An Israeli military spokesperson said Israeli forces detained “suspects” from Syria, “based on intelligence indications” and “those found not to be involved in terrorist activities are released”. IDF representatives were in “direct contact with civilians” and did not prevent agricultural work in areas that were “critical” for them, but operated “in these areas in accordance with operational needs”. The spokesperson also said claims troops fired indiscriminately from checkpoints at civilians were false.
Two Kodana residents described dozens of Israelis coming to their village earlier that morning for a “meeting”, during which they saw them pointing in various directions. “We are puzzled by what they are doing ... You can’t ask them why they’re doing it. You can’t talk to them,” one said. “Maybe they will ask people to leave ... If they ask us to leave we have to leave, we cannot resist them.”
He said he stayed at home after sunset now. “Any house they want to enter, any hour, they storm the houses,“ the man continued, trying to explain the anxiety residents now lived with. “No one orders us to stay in at night, but we are afraid and they are afraid. If you go out and they have a patrol in the street they might shoot you.”
Hani Alagbar assisted with this reporting.
