Israeli military vehicles entered the village of Saida al-Golan, in Quneitra Governorate today, searching homes in the area and capturing one civilian before withdrawing from the village toward the farmland further to the west.
A large number of IDF vehicles were also reported as having entered the al-Samandiyah village, where troops searched a number of homes, though no detentions were reported in that case. Farmland around Kodna was targeted with heavy gunfire from an Israeli outpost.
The farmlands in the west of Quneitra are increasing inaccessible to Syrian farmers, with the IDF having destroyed crops and orchards, and the Sufa 53 line ending up separating the population of the villages from the agricultural zones that were once their economic lifelines.
Israeli troops in Syria’s Quneitra Governorate | Image from SOHR
Israeli military bulldozers are active across the western side of Quneitra, both in the south where they’re destroying primarily farmland and olive groves, and north near Jbata al-Khashab, where they’re primarily destroying forests.
The ultimate goal is to establish a military line of control cutting across the governorate, with Israeli officials envisioning a trench dug across that area for the sake of improving the defensive position in the occupied Golan Heights.
The consequences, however, are broader than that for the locals, as the line that the IDF is creating was land routinely traversed by locals in the course of their day to day activities, and a militarily functional line would necessarily preclude most of that activity, leaving farmers on one side and fields on the other.
