Recently, an officer from the Mountain Brigade stood at the corner of the Hermon Crown outpost—until less than a year ago under Assad’s army control—and was stunned. Without binoculars or any special observation equipment, he could clearly see the legendary Nafah Base (“Camp Yitzhak”), the divisional headquarters of the IDF in the Golan Heights, near the kibbutzim Ortal and Ein Zivan. That was the same base the Syrians reached during the Yom Kippur War. Then, as now, it serves as the division HQ responsible for the Golan Heights.
“My jaw dropped,” described officer G. later to his comrades. He explained that, even in the most professional terrain analyses he had conducted, and with the IDF’s advanced mapping and simulation technologies, he never believed the divisional HQ—the IDF’s most important command center in northern Golan—could be seen so clearly from the Syrian side.
Close to Damascus, on the road to Beirut: The IDF’s special operation
(Video: IDF spokesperson’s unit)
While the soldiers at Nafah were not in range of advanced anti-tank missiles such as the Kornet, they were certainly visible as they moved about in their daily routine, exposed to rapid and accurate artillery fire, for example from mortars. Worse still, a Syrian or Hezbollah observer could identify an Israeli VIP convoy—from the chief of staff to the prime minister—arriving for a routine visit to the base, which sits amid the IDF’s main training grounds in the Golan. This is one of the main reasons the IDF insists that Israel must retain control of the Syrian Hermon, about 2,800 meters high.
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(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
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Uncovering a waepon’s cache
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
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Observation point for Damascus
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
The IDF captured this peak without a fight 10 months ago, shortly after the Assad regime collapsed. It also seized a strip of Syrian territory, averaging 5 km–10 km deep, along the Golan down to the tri-border area near Hamat Gader, and has since established eight company-level outposts there. Even if the IDF were to withdraw from these outposts back into Israeli territory, Northern Command is expected to recommend to the political echelon that control of the Syrian Hermon remain with Israel.
The reason is not only the full observation advantage over the Golan plains on both sides of the border, but also—as the past weeks have proven—control over Hezbollah’s weapons smuggling routes in southern Lebanon, and the ability to better defend the Druze living near Damascus from extremist militias that recently massacred them only a few dozen kilometers away.
The recently conducted “Green-White” operation, details of which are revealed here for the first time, demonstrated a third advantage: clearing the Hermon region and the Syria-Lebanon border villages of thousands of Assad army weapons that could easily fall into terrorist hands in the northern arena—and some have already done so.
Northern Command officers recall the dramatic day last fall: “Already in the first hours after the Assad regime fell, we identified through observation and intelligence an onslaught of locals storming abandoned Syrian army bases—even in the Hermon region. People took home weapons, rifles and anti-tank launchers in large numbers. So we moved forward quickly and, by the very next day, we had crossed the border into these areas.”
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(Photo: IDF Spokesperspon’s office)
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Carrying out the operation
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
According to the IDF, some of these weapons were seized by extremist groups, who used them recently to massacre Druze communities in Syria. “Weapons they didn’t know how to operate, like anti-tank launchers or rockets, they simply left behind,” a Northern Command spokesperson explained. “That’s why our activity now in Syrian territory has value for years to come.”
Though Hezbollah operatives are not currently present on the Syrian side of the Lebanon border, the IDF warns: “There are people there who could easily be affiliated with them.”
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The operation in Syria
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
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A bomb shelter near the site of the NOVA massacre
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
Since seizing these Syrian areas, the IDF has conducted several weapons-collection operations, retrieving thousands of arms from Syrian Golan villages. Usually this was done with the consent of the locals and via mediation of local Syrian leadership, without resistance. But in the Hermon sector, the story was different.
When IDF troops began scanning the mountainous Syrian areas north of the Hermon, they discovered dozens of dug-in fighting positions (“rabbit warrens”), fortified and scorched, built by Assad’s soldiers. These bunkers contained loaded machine guns and anti-tank launchers, ready for fire. Assad’s troops had prepared them in case militias loyal to Ahmad al-Shara (al-Julani) attacked—but ultimately fled, leaving everything behind.
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The burned out body of a bus
(Photo: Dover Hador )
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(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
Step-by-step, the IDF pushed deeper past the Syrian Hermon, and a few weeks ago reached two large, abandoned brigade bases about 40 km north of the Hermon.
These “ghost bases” contained enormous stockpiles of weapons, old military trucks and Soviet-made tanks.
“We turned back to Israel, realizing we’d need heavy transport capacity to haul away such quantities, along with more security forces. On the way back, we met local Druze who welcomed us warmly and asked for our help,” described one officer.
This was during the first days of violent assaults by Islamist militias on Druze neighborhoods near Damascus. The Druze community in Israel had pleaded with the government to order the IDF to protect their relatives in Syria.
The Druze in the Hermon area live in the village of al-Rahla. They quickly sheltered relatives fleeing the massacres near Damascus. IDF troops gave them initial aid, and in return the Druze pointed them to Assad’s abandoned weapons caches—mostly 107mm short-range rocket launchers and anti-tank positions in good condition. Some villagers kept weapons for self-defense.
In that first mission, IDF troops from the newly formed Mountain Brigade—responsible for the Hermon and Mount Dov—also realized the area was rife with arms smugglers trying to push weapons into Lebanon.
Learning the terrain well, the IDF returned about three weeks ago in Operation Green-White, with special transport and security forces from Division 98. The mission was to clear the two large abandoned Syrian bases, while also delivering large aid shipments to the Druze of al-Rahla and their displaced kin from Damascus.
The 14-hour operation took place just 10 km by air from Damascus. For the first time since the Yom Kippur War, an IDF artillery battery crossed into Syrian territory to secure the forces.
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Weapons cache discovered
(Photo: IDFspokes)
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Some of the seized weapons
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
“We set out as a brigade-level operation with troops from the 551st Brigade and the Druze reserve battalion Harav 299, moving in a long night convoy, 38 km deep into Syria—hundreds of IDF soldiers, as close as possible to Damascus,” explained Lt. Col. G., deputy commander of the Mountain Brigade.
On the way, they spotted faint lights moving suspiciously on a dirt road in a wadi. They stopped and searched Syrian vehicles, finding dozens of weapons en route to Lebanon—intended for a Hezbollah-linked arms dealer in the village of Shebaa, near Mount Dov. The weapons were confiscated, thwarting the smuggling almost by chance.
“These caches could easily have reached Hezbollah,” stressed Lt. Col. G. “We’re no longer afraid to operate inside enemy territory—this is a step forward.”
At dawn, the forces reached the abandoned brigade bases. With air cover and intelligence support, they collected hundreds of weapons, neutralized tanks and gathered intelligence materials—including from Assad’s former commando units.
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The view from Damascus
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
On their return, they passed al-Rahla again, this time by daylight. From the friendly Druze village—whose residents waved at the IDF troops—the officers were amazed at the panoramic view: on one side, the strategic Beirut–Damascus highway below; on the other, the Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah’s operational and logistical stronghold.
IDF reservists of Division 210 returned with 3.5 tons of explosives and Syrian military-grade weapons—part of the 7 tons collected by the Mountain Brigade in Syrian territory in recent months. Preparations for the next operation have already begun, though commanders acknowledge the danger will be greater.
The IDF troops also saw the chaos firsthand. In al-Rahla, they witnessed arguments between village elders, who sought to avoid escalation, and younger villagers demanding to block water pumps that carry water from local streams to Damascus and the nearby town of al-Qatana.
“That’s why we want these raids to be short and focused,” say Northern Command officers.