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<\/p>\nQUNEITRA \u2014 It was two o\u2019clock in the morning of September 16 when Muhammad Hussein Arabi, 48, woke to the din of sound bombs near his house in Khan Arnabeh, a small town in Syria\u2019s southwestern Quneitra province. Looking around in confusion, he realized that his home was surrounded.<\/p>\n
A voice in Arabic rang out over a megaphone: \u201cSuheil Arabi, surrender yourself.\u201d The men outside\u2014Israeli soldiers\u2014were asking for his 17-year-old son.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Soon, the soldiers were at his doorstep, demanding to see Suheil and telling Muhammad\u2014who goes by Abu Suheil\u2014to give up any weapons in the house. Abu Suheil says they conducted multiple searches inside, including with sniffer dogs and drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them I didn\u2019t have any weapons,\u201d Abu Suheil said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know where Suheil was either, I was sleeping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier that night, the Arabi family\u2014Suheil is the only son\u2014had returned from a picnic. Abu Suheil felt tired and went to sleep, he said. When he woke up to the chaos, he realized that his son had already fled. Suheil\u2019s mate was still hot in the living room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a child, he\u2019s just 17,\u201d Abu Suheil said. \u201cHe must have gotten scared of all the noise and run off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Abu Suheil says his son had never had run-ins with authorities\u2014Syrian or otherwise\u2014before. The closest he came to trouble was a minor motorcycle accident a few months earlier with a United Nations (UN) patrol in the buffer zone running between Khan Arnabeh and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.<\/p>\n
Most recently, after seeing the new Syrian army was looking for recruits, Suheil signed up with some friends in the hope of earning some money, his father said. At the time of the September raid, he was yet to receive his training or to be formally registered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After searching the Arabi family\u2019s home, the Israeli soldiers blindfolded Abu Suheil, put him in handcuffs and drove him to their base near al-Hamidiyeh village, about 15 minutes away by car.\u00a0 They kept him there for over 24 hours, questioning him about his son\u2019s whereabouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the first time they entered Khan Arnabeh,\u201d Abu Suheil told Syria Direct a month later, puffing on a cigarette in his living room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A hilltop Israeli outpost built on Syrian territory in Quneitra, with a buffer zone indicator in the foreground, 14\/10\/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair\/Syria Direct)<\/p>\n
The buffer zone<\/p>\n
In 1974, Israel and Syria agreed to an uneasy disengagement following years of war as part of a UN-brokered agreement<\/a>. The deal established a demilitarized buffer zone under the supervision of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), whose patrols became a regular part of life in the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n The buffer zone stood for 50 years. But when the Assad regime fell last December, Israel unilaterally declared<\/a> the 1974 agreement \u201cvoid until order was restored,\u201d invaded the strip of territory and established<\/a> six military bases in Quneitra province.<\/p>\n Nearly a year later, the occupying forces regularly set up flying checkpoints<\/a> at the entrances of Quneitra villages, and often conduct patrols<\/a> deeper into Syrian territory. The UNDOF still maintains a presence, often issuing reports<\/a> about the tensions and violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n The buffer zone is marked by barrels painted in red and white, placed along the UN-demarcated Alpha line to the west and Bravo line to the east. Numbers on the barrels indicate the distance in meters from the other side of the zone.<\/p>\n Khan Arnabeh, where Abu Suheil lives, sits just east of the Bravo line, the boundary on the Syrian side of the buffer zone. Since the regime fell, Israeli incursions have been common in border villages inside the zone, like Jubata al-Khashab, he noted. Ones further inside Syrian territory, like Khan Arnabeh, had largely escaped, though in early November, a flying checkpoint was installed<\/a> by the Israeli army not far from the village.\u00a0<\/p>\n Abu Suheil says he has no clue why the Israeli soldiers came looking for his son. A few days after he was released, Syrian General Security arrived at his house. \u201cThey kept me for about half an hour, asking me why the Israelis wanted Suheil,\u201d he explained. He told them he knew nothing, and they left.<\/p>\n A UNDOF patrol in Quneitra, 14\/10\/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair\/Syria Direct)<\/p>\n Displacement and destruction<\/p>\n Since invading the buffer zone last December, Israeli forces have carried out abuses in southern Syria, including the war crime of forced displacement, Human Rights Watch reported<\/a> in September. Homes have been seized and demolished, and Syrians have been detained and taken into Israel in violation of international law.\u00a0<\/p>\n Adam Coogle, deputy director at the Middle East and North Africa(MENA) division of HRW says the Israeli military cites \u201cmilitary necessity\u201d for some of its actions in the south.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a very good argument because there weren\u2019t really active hostilities,\u201d he told Syria Direct. \u201cAnd they didn\u2019t really provide for the population at all, they just kicked them out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In October, Israeli forces detained<\/a> five civilians from southern Quneitra\u2014just one of the latest in a string of incursions and detentions since the regime\u2019s ouster. In August, Israeli forces shot and killed<\/a> a young man near his home in the northern Quneitra village of Taranja.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Abu Muhammad (a pseudonym), an agricultural worker living in Rasm al-Rawadi, a town located inside the buffer zone less than two kilometers from the Alpha line, is among those whose homes have been destroyed.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was at home in the early hours after the regime fell on December 8, 2024, when Israeli troops entered his village and forced many villagers out of their homes and into an abandoned house.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAfter a few hours, they gave all of us an evacuation warning, and didn\u2019t let us take even the basic necessities from our homes. We were displaced to a neighboring village for about a month and twenty days,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Abu Muhammad is originally from the occupied Golan Heights, which were seized and occupied by Israel in 1967. He was displaced to Damascus until 1974, when he returned to the country\u2019s south, and set up a new life in Quneitra province. During the Syrian civil war, he was forced to leave his home again in 2014, moving back to Damascus before returning to Quneitra. \u201cOur whole life is one displacement to the next,\u201d he quipped.<\/p>\n When he returned home to Rasm al-Rawadi after the latest round of displacement, Abu Muhammad realized that Israeli forces had demolished part of his home.<\/p>\n Abu Muhammad\u2019s partially demolished house in Rasm al-Rawadi, Quneitra, 14\/10\/2026 (Anagha Subhash Nair\/Syria Direct)<\/p>\n \u201cWhy? We don\u2019t know why. They\u2019re an occupying enemy, that\u2019s their name,\u201d he said with a shrug, standing with his back to the skeleton of what was once his living room. Nearby, two other houses were also partially demolished by Israeli forces.<\/p>\n Israeli forces still conduct regular patrols in his village, maneuvering through its wide expanses of farmland. Throughout what was once a buffer zone, roads are dotted with earthen barriers set up by occupation forces, forcing residents to take long, convoluted routes while traveling by car. Often, villagers are forced to interact with patrols on the roads.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey behave badly with us, they always talk to us in a condescending way, and sometimes even hit [us],\u201d Abu Muhammad said. \u201cThey bother us; if you tell them you\u2019re trying to go home, they tell you you can\u2019t and ask you to leave.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018To disrupt any momentum\u2019<\/p>\n Caroline Rose, director of the New Lines Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says Israel\u2019s justification for unilaterally nullifying the 1974 agreement is \u201cintentionally vague.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really a breakout opportunity for the Israeli government to try and establish a buffer zone that they\u2019ve long sought all along,\u201d she explained\u2014one that it controls.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s also a way to disrupt any momentum that the new administration has, and prevent it from being able to acquire any sort of conventional military equipment or capabilities,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n In August, an Israeli airstrike targeted<\/a> the new authorities\u2019 Internal Security Forces (General Security) headquarters in Quneitra\u2019s al-Salam city. Tel Aviv has repeatedly called for the complete demilitarization<\/a> of southern Syria.\u00a0<\/p>\n Syria Direct contacted the Internal Security Forces headquarters in Quneitra, which said it could not comment.<\/p>\n In late October, Syria\u2019s Permanent Representative to the UN Ibrahim Olabi called<\/a> on Israel to withdraw its forces from southern Syria, including from the occupied Golan Heights, condemning the country\u2019s actions as undermining Syria\u2019s \u201csecurity and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n An Internal Security Forces (General Security) checkpoint in Syria\u2019s southwestern Quneitra province, 14\/10\/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair\/Syria Direct)<\/p>\n In some cases, the Israeli army has justified abductions of Syrians with allegations<\/a> they belong to Iran-backed groups, Hezbollah or Hamas\u2014claims Rose is skeptical of. In the early years of the war in Syria, Iran had a presence<\/a> in Quneitra through its armed proxies. By 2018, however, an Israeli-Russian agreement<\/a> largely kept Iran and allied groups at bay, though their presence had not been completely eliminated.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point, so many of these networks are trying to lay low rather than create justification for recurrent Israeli strikes,\u201d Rose said. \u201cIt\u2019s very clear now no one is safe in the more traditional parts of Hezbollah control and influence in Lebanon, so I really doubt that this contested area would be seen as a safe haven for these different networks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Living under occupation\u2019<\/p>\n For Abu Muhammad, the experience of repeated Israeli incursions into his hometown has been one of \u201chumiliation.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019m living under occupation. They don\u2019t let us farm. They destroyed all our trees in the area, which were hundreds of years old, with their bulldozers,\u201d he said. \u201cThey destroyed our lands, roads, water supply and electricity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel and Damascus have been engaged in diplomatic discussions<\/a> in recent months, with the latter hoping for a return to some version of\u200b the 1974 agreement. The latest round of talks hit a speedbump with Israel\u2019s demand<\/a> to open a humanitarian corridor to Suwayda, where fighting between local Druze and Bedouin fighters spiraled into sectarian massacres<\/a> in July, with the participation of some Syrian government forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe could take lessons and try to replicate some elements [of the 2018 agreement] in a UN-brokered, UN-controlled process along Syria\u2019s border region,\u201d Rose said. \u201cI think that really is the only way, because if we expect the government to implement this, then we could see clashes once again between Druze and Sunni elements.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Quneitra-1-800x533.jpg\")
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