JNS
Arab sources report IDF activity near Damascus and Quneitra.
Israel is working to create a demilitarized zone in Syria stretching from the Golan Heights to south of Damascus, alongside a humanitarian corridor, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.
"Right now we are focused on three things," Netanyahu declared during a visit to Julis in Israel's north, where he met with the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, as well as local leaders and members of Knesset from the village.
Jerusalem's goals include protecting the Druze in Syria's Sweida region and beyond; establishing a security zone from the Golan Heights south of Damascus, including Sweida; and creating a humanitarian corridor that will allow the delivery of aid, including "food, building materials, everything needed, as well as large-scale medical assistance," he said.
Addressing crimes committed against Syrian Druze at the hands of state-sponsored militias, the PM said: "We are brothers. Would Israel not extend a hand to save our Druze brothers? And we acted. When I understood the magnitude of the disaster, we acted immediately.
"At the height of the atrocities, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif called me and said: 'The Jews in the Holocaust cried out for help and no one came. Israel must come.' It was like an arrow straight to the heart. Because it is not only factually true, it is also morally true, humanly true," he added.
Defense Minister Israel Katz earlier on Thursday hinted at Israeli military activity in Syria following Arab reports of Israel Defense Forces attacks in the Damascus countryside and the south of the country.
“Our forces are operating in all combat zones day and night for the security of Israel,” Katz wrote on X Thursday morning. The Israeli Defense Forces has not confirmed the operation.
Syrian state media reported on Thursday that Israeli ground forces raided a site that had been attacked by air on Tuesday and Wednesday. According to Arab media reports, troops remained there for more than two hours during the overnight operation.
The Israeli Air Force carried out around 15 strikes in southern Damascus, targeting Syrian army headquarters to prepare for troop landings by helicopter in Sweida and Al-Kiswah, Israel Hayom reported.
Israeli drones reportedly targeted an army unit near Al-Kiswah, eight miles south of Damascus, on Tuesday. Six soldiers were killed in the attack, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency. Syria’s Foreign Ministry later raised the death toll to eight, condemning the Israeli actions. The site was bombed again on Wednesday, according to state television.
A government source told SANA that soldiers had found “surveillance and eavesdropping devices” in the area before it was hit by Israeli strikes on Tuesday. Israel Hayom reported that "the raid was likely meant to counter the Syrian army's activity of trying to dismantle the installed Israeli listening devices," adding that the strikes prevented Syrian forces from reaching the site.
A Syrian Defense Ministry official told AFP that the site was a former Assad regime military base in Tal Maneh. According to the MENA Research Center, the base has been used by pro-Iranian terrorist groups. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the site contained weapons used by the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah.
Two years ago, the Israeli Air Force struck Iranian targets in the area.
According to the war monitor, this is the first Israeli raid of its kind since the fall of the Assad regime in December. The IDF has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since then and has taken control of Mount Hermon and the security zone to protect Israel's northern border communities.
SANA also reported an Israeli raid in the village of Tranja in Quneitra Province in southwestern Syria on Tuesday, which killed one person.
IDF troops will remain in their positions on Mount Hermon and in the security zone “to protect the communities of the Golan and the Galilee from threats emanating from the Syrian side, as the central lesson from the events of October 7,” Katz wrote in a Hebrew-language statement on Tuesday morning, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023.
"We will also continue to protect the Druze in Syria,” he said.
Katz’s remarks came after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa claimed on Sunday that there had been progress in the negotiations for renewed security understandings with Jerusalem based on the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement that ended the Yom Kippur War.
While the president told reporters that he does not view the current circumstances as favorable for concluding a peace agreement, he said he would “not hesitate” to do so if he becomes convinced that this would benefit Syria and the region.
Syria last month claimed a willingness to reimplement the 1974 deal with Israel. After a phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said he intends “to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement.”
During a visit to the Syrian side of Mount Hermon on Jan. 28, Katz said that the IDF would remain in the border region for as long as necessary.
“The IDF will remain at the summit of the Hermon and the security zone indefinitely to ensure the security of the communities of the Golan Heights and the north, and all the residents of Israel,” Katz said.
