Growing Network of Israeli Outposts in Syria, Lebanon Suggest IDF Is Planning a Long Stay

Much was made about the five hilltop surveillance posts Israel hastily assembled before the deadline to withdraw from Lebanon, outposts which they ultimately retained to this day and which seem more or less permanent. Israel isn’t done expanding their military presence beyond their own border though.

The “temporary” outposts are being thrown up around the frontier between the Israeli occupied Golan Heights and the also the currently Israeli occupied parts of southwestern Syria. Israel invaded Syria in December, after the regime change, and presented it at the time as a semi short-term measure for security’s sake.

Earlier this month though DM Israel Katz indicated the intention is to remain inside Syria for “an unlimited time,” which came along with threats against Syrian forces if they attempt to resist the incursion, which so far they have not.

The outposts in Syria, for instance, aren’t merely hilltop islands of Israeli control like in Lebanon, but are being surrounded by military infrastructure, including watchtowers, roads, and prefab housing suggesting this is far from a temporary stay.

Israel has provided next to no transparency about what they’re doing in Syria, and the only reason so much is known is because satellite images are showing the intensive construction operations they are carrying out.

Fully nine bases have been established inside Syrian territory recently, and while most of them are inside the UNDOF demilitarized zone, the southernmost two of them are beyond that zone, with one so far south it’s nearly in Jordan.

Lebanon and their Israeli outposts aren’t being ignored either, with the images showing construction and expansion of the hilltop sites inside Lebanon as well. This suggests what they built before the deadline was just enough to give them a pretext to remain, and that the real outpost infrastructure is still a work in progress.

Near one of the outposts, Israeli forces have built a trench inside Lebanese territory, blocking the village of Houla from land that’s very much Lebanese soil, but now part of the ongoing occupation.

There has been some international disquiet about the occupations inside Lebanon, but so far neither it, nor the ongoing invasion and occupation of Syria, has amounted to much in the way of backlash, and Israeli officials insist, to the extent they talk about it at all, that the plan is to remain.