Adding concern that the Israeli invasion of southwest Syria is proving to be a lot more permanent than initially suggested, Israeli settlers have established a new illegal settlement inside Syria’s Daraa Governorate, bringing some 140 head of cattle with them.
The project was the result of a group calling itself Hashomer Hahadash, with the help of a former IDF commander, Col. Benny Kata. The settlement is positioned along the Yarmouk Basin watershed, adjacent to the already Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The group has been seeking to occupy this particular part of Syria for over a decade now, and claims that the seized land was technically seized by Israel in 1974, even though it was on the other side of the fence. The area was previously grazing land for Syrian herders.
Israeli cattle grazing along the Syrian frontier | Image from SOHR
The settlers termed the Syrian herders both a “nuisance” and a potential “infiltration” threat to Israel, in as much as it was relatively close to already occupied Israeli territory. The cows, they say, will keep the Syrians and their own herds out.
This perception of Syrian shepherds as a de facto threat seems to reflect IDF policy in southwest Syria, as shepherds are routinely the target of harassment and summary detention by Israeli troops, even though they never actually leave rural Syria. It now seems to serve to give the settlers an argument that their land seizure is serving Israeli strategic interests.
Israeli forces invaded southwest Syria beyond the Golan Heights in December of 2024, immediately following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad’s government. Initially, forces seized the demilitarized zone between Golan and the rest of Syria, but they’ve subsequently gone deeper, largely into Quneitra and Daraa Governorates.
The settlers have been increasingly keen to occupy more of Syria, with one faction selling wheat looted from the Syrian southwest, citing Biblical texts and claiming the land amounted to part of the “radical Sunni axis of evil.”
To that end, they argue that “pioneering Jews” could necessarily get an even better yield of crops than “Hamas-supporting Sunnis” could, and argued for broad settlement of that part of Syria, which is largely agricultural land.
Israeli officials are largely remaining mum on the situation, though Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli spent quite a bit of time vilifying Syrians, along with Turks, Pakistanis and Qataris, insisting they could never live in peace alongside Israel.
