QUNEITRA (The Thursday Times) — Israeli forces detained three people during a raid on the town of Jabata al-Khashab in southern Syria’s Quneitra province on Friday, releasing one of them later, Syrian state media said, in the latest of a string of incursions that Damascus says break a 1974 ceasefire agreement.
A force of more than nine military vehicles entered the town in the province’s northern countryside and searched several homes, the state news agency SANA said. Soldiers also broke down the doors of several shops and smashed their storefronts.
The raid came a day before a car bomb killed a man and a girl in Jaramana, near Damascus, and as figures from the provincial authorities showed how often Israeli troops now enter the area. The Quneitra Media Directorate, a provincial government office, documented 125 Israeli military incursions and 55 temporary checkpoints across the province in October alone. It said seven people were still in Israeli custody after arrests that month, while 23 others had been held and later released.
Farmland and olive groves
The directorate’s monthly report also recorded Israeli forces restricting access to grazing land, bulldozing farmland, and destroying water pumps and livestock facilities. It said about 300 olive trees had been uprooted in and around Saida al-Hanout, and that earthworks had resumed in the forest near Jabata al-Khashab.
In Rweihena, residents estimate that between 5,000 and 6,000 dunams of farmland and grazing land have been seized. Herders say new military posts force them to take dangerous detours, and local dairy production has fallen sharply as a result.
Friday’s detentions follow others in the north of the province. On October 31, Israeli troops detained five civilians, four of them olive pickers stopped at a checkpoint on the road between Ofania and Khan Arnabah, in operations that also reached the village of al-Hurriya, Syrian state media said. On October 23, a man was detained while herding sheep near Hader.
Buffer zone
The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a monitoring group, says it documented at least 453 Israeli ground incursions between December 2024 and October 6 this year, in which at least 69 people were killed and 162 were arbitrarily detained. The UN Human Rights Office separately counted about 280 incursions in September alone.
Israel sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights after Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December 2024, and has since widened its presence in southern Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued for buffer zones and for holding strategic positions near the border, saying they are needed for Israel’s security.
Damascus has repeatedly condemned the operations as violations of its sovereignty and of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. It has called on the international community to press Israel to withdraw, and says measures Israel has imposed on Syrian territory have no legal standing.
