BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel’s incursion

An hour’s drive from Damascus, along a country road leading to the Syrian village of Hadar, we encountered the Israeli army.

Two military vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear man a makeshift checkpoint: a foreign authority in a country celebrating its freedom. They waved us in.

It was evidence of Israel’s incursion into Syrian territory: the temporary seizure, it said, of a UN-supervised 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 leave,” said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. “We want to have hope, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

The village chief, Jawdat al-Tawil, pointed out the Golan Heights territory that Israel occupied in 1967, clearly visible from the terraces of Hadar.

Many residents here have relatives who still live there.

They now see Israeli forces routinely moving around their own village, parts of which protrude beyond the demilitarized zone. On a slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the hillside.

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 in the process.

“We do not allow anyone to trespass on our land,” he said. “(But) Israel is a state, we cannot oppose it. We used to confront 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 that plan was revealed, Syria’s interim leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, warned that Israel’s military maneuvers risked 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 due to threats posed by jihadist groups operating along the ceasefire line with Syria, and described its military incursions there as “limited and temporary.”

Hadar’s residents primarily belong to the Druze community, a tight-knit and introverted group that broke away from mainstream Shiite Islam centuries ago.

When Israel occupied part of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war and then unilaterally annexed it, some of the Druze chose to stay 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 seize more territory.

For years, Israel has been fighting the Iranian-backed militia 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 those groups – and Iran – weaker. But Israel has since intensified its military campaign, taking advantage of the political vacuum to expand its reach.

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

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that “immediate risks” to Israel remained and that recent events in Syria had increased the threat, “despite the moderate appearance that rebel leaders claim to present.”

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

The village used to fight Iranian-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 these groups to reach an agreement.

Syria is not a place where people have depended on a single ally or fought against a single 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 like the Druze suffered under Assad. The new leaders of the HTS country 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 like Al Qaeda.

It was around the time 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 path where Abdo, 30, died, and I asked him how he felt about HTS taking control of Syria now.

“At first they were gangs. Now they have gotten rid of the tyrant (Assad) and have come to power,” he said. “They are supposed to govern with justice, provide security and guarantee the rights of the people.”

“It’s still not clear if they have changed,” he said. “I hope so.”

Additional reporting by Yousef Shomali, Charlotte Scarr and Mayar Mohanna