Israeli troops continue to carry out raids into southwestern Syria, once again centering on the northern parts of Quneitra Governorate and in and around the town of Jbata Al-Khashab, where troops established a checkpoint at the key Ain al-Bayda Junction nearby, hassling civilians and vehicles trying to pass by.
Such checkpoints are becoming increasingly common in Quneitra and parts of Daraa, where Israeli troops move into an area, set up a checkpoint, and usually stay for just a few hours before withdrawing. Only occasionally does anything happen beyond inconvenience for the locals.
Israeli troops were also operating in the area of al-Hamidiyah village, where they captured three people on the outskirts of the village who were gathering firewood. What they’re being charged with is unclear, and reportedly they were just arbitrarily “arrested.”
Here too such incidents are not uncommon. Over the weekend the IDF captured a pair of young men in another operation near Umm Batna, though they released them after a relatively short period of time, and the IDF never issued a statement revealing why they were detained in the first place.
While the IDF is eager to spin their operations on various other fronts as major successes, often without much backing them up, they tend to make few comments about their operations in Syria, which began with an invasion in December of 2024.
In that invasion, Israel occupied the demilitarized zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights, and Israeli officials have maintained that they intend to keep that zone and want Syria to create another, new demilitarized zone separating the old one from the rest of Syria.
That invasion and occupation didn’t mark the end of Israel’s operations on Syrian territory, as they’ve regularly gone deeper into Syria, though with temporary checkpoints and seemingly random detentions. Those operations seem to accomplish little to nothing, which may be why the IDF rarely even notes them in the press.
