The BBC talks to Syrians watching Israel’s incursion

An hour’s drive from Damascus, on a country road towards the Syrian village of Hadar, we meet the Israeli army.

Two military vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear provide an impromptu check: a foreign authority in a country celebrating its freedom. They let us through.

It was proof of Israel’s incursion into Syrian territory: the temporary seizure, he said, of a UN-controlled buffer zone established in a ceasefire agreement 50 years ago.

“Maybe they will leave, maybe they will stay, maybe they will make the area safe and then they will disappear,” said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. “We want to wait, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

Village chief Jawdat al-Tawil pointed to the Golan Heights territory that Israel occupied in 1967, clearly visible from the Hadar Terraces.

Many residents here have relatives who still live there.

Now they see Israeli forces routinely moving through their own village, parts of which jut into the demilitarized zone. On a slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the slope.

A week after the fall of President Assad’s regime, the sense of freedom here is tinged with fatalism.

Jawdat al-Tawil proudly told me how the village had defended itself against militia groups during the Syrian civil war and showed me portraits of the dozens of men who had died doing so.

“We do not allow anyone to trespass on our land,” he said. “(But) Israel is a state, we cannot oppose it. We used to oppose individuals, but Israel is a superpower.”

Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Israel has also carried out hundreds of airstrikes against military targets across Syria.

And the prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has announced new plans to double the population of Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, saying the move was necessary because of the “new front” that had opened in Syria.

Speaking before unveiling that plan, Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa warned that Israel’s military maneuvers risked an unjustified escalation in the region and said his administration did not want a conflict with Israel.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said its actions were necessary because of threats from jihadist groups operating along the ceasefire line with Syria, and described its military incursions there as “limited and temporary”.

The residents of Hadar belong mainly to the Druze community, an introverted and close-knit group that split from traditional Shiite Islam centuries ago.

When Israel occupied part of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, and later unilaterally annexed it, some of the Druze there chose to remain and take Israeli citizenship.

Al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia that forced President Assad from power this month, has his family roots in the occupied Golan Heights.

Some here on the Syrian-controlled side fear that Israel’s plan is to take more territory for itself.

For years, Israel has been fighting the Iranian-backed militia there that supported Assad. This border region is a key arms supply route between Tehran and the proxy forces it maintains, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

The fall of Assad has left these groups – and Iran – weaker. But Israel has since stepped up its military campaign, taking advantage of the political vacuum to expand its reach.

It has also targeted military equipment left behind by Assad’s forces at bases across the country, worried about who might end up using it in the future.

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that “immediate risks” to Israel remain, and recent events in Syria have increased the threat, “despite the moderate appearance rebel leaders claim to present “.

Marginalized by the Assad regime and targeted as infidels by Sunni jihadist groups such as HTS, Syria’s Druze are more tolerant of Israel than many other communities here.

The village used to fight Iran-backed groups that Israel sees as a threat here, but Jawdat al-Tawil told me that alliances in the area were changing and that he was now talking to those groups to reach an agreement.

Syria is not a place where people have trusted a single ally, or fought only one enemy.

“We just need peace,” resident Riyad Zaidan told me. “We’ve had enough war, enough blood, enough hard life, we have to stop.”

Religious minorities such as the Druze suffered under Assad. The country’s new HTS leaders have promised tolerance and respect for Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious groups.

But eight years ago, the group was still aligned with global jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda.

It was when HTS split from al-Qaeda in 2016 that Jawdat al-Tawil’s son Abdo was killed by his militiamen outside Hadar, while fighting for the Syrian army.

He showed me the road where Abdo, 30, died, and I asked him how he thought HTS would take control of Syria now.

“In the beginning they were gangs. Now they got rid of the tyrant (Assad) and came to power,” he said. “They are supposed to rule with justice, provide security and guarantee people’s rights.”

“It’s not clear yet if they’ve changed,” he said. – I hope so.

Additional reporting by Yousef Shomali, Charlotte Scarr and Mayar Mohanna