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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://mondoweiss.net/2026/06/israel-is-abducting-ordinary-syrians-and-seizing-their-land-in-quneitra/?ml_recipient=189984192981894503&ml_link=189984032740607358&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2026-06-11&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation+-+8am">mondoweiss.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel is abducting ordinary Syrians and seizing their land in Quneitra</h1>
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<span class="gmail-post-author"><span class="gmail-by">By</span> <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/author/hudda-mattar/" title="Posts by Hudda Mattar" class="gmail-author gmail-url gmail-fn" rel="author">Hudda Mattar</a></span>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">June 10, 2026</div>
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<img src="cid:ii_mq9mq2900" alt="image.png" width="454" height="302"><br><p><font size="1">An Israeli artillery unit carries out a military drill at the crossroads
between Lebanon, Syria, and Israel on August 28, 2023. (Photo: © Atef
Safadi/EFE via ZUMA Press/APA images) </font></p><p>On May 19, 15-year-old Omar al-Ajraf had walked with his friend,
Sanad al-Mousa, to collect his exam card. Neither returned that
afternoon, disappearing somewhere on the road between their school and
their homes in Rasm al-Ajraf, a hamlet attached to the village of
Koudana in Syria\u2019s Quneitra governorate.</p>
<p>Omar\u2019s mother filed a report with local authorities, posted in local
Facebook groups, and waited through dreadful hours, fearing what might
have gone wrong.</p>
<p>The boys came back the next day with the bruises of a beating still
fresh on them, dumped by Israeli forces on the outskirts of al-Hamidiya,
where the army recently built a military base. A third youth, picked up
in the same operation as he ran across the fields, did not come back at
all.</p>
<p>Omar and Sanad are two names on a daily-growing list in Quneitra. After Bashar al-Assad\u2019s fall in December 2024, Israel <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/20/israel-launches-fresh-raids-in-syrias-quneitra-establishes-checkpoints">declared</a>
the 1974 Disengagement Agreement, brokered after the 1973 war, void and
rolled into the buffer zone, taking Mount Hermon and grabbing control
of the entire strip of land near the border up to the Yarmouk basin in
Daraa governorate. </p>
<p>\u201cThey asked me if I belonged to Hezbollah and if I carried any
weapons, and showed me pictures of people I didn\u2019t know,\u201d al-Ajraf told <em>Mondoweiss</em>. \u201cThen they beat us.\u201d</p>
<p>For Omar\u2019s parents, the questions came as a shock. The Lebanese
resistance movement, Hezbollah, has little popular support in Quneitra,
and is widely rejected across Syria, particularly because of its role
fighting alongside the former government. </p>
<p>His family added that the areas where Israeli forces are conducting
sweeps were once strongholds of the armed opposition, which battled the
government, Iran, and Hezbollah throughout the civil war. </p>
<p>\u201cThe pattern of arrests, night raids, bulldozer convoys, chemical
spraying of farmland, settler incursions, and cold-blooded killings has
unfolded under a silence from the international system that has
functioned, in practice, as permission,\u201d said Fadel Abdul Ghani, head of
the Syrian Network for Human Rights.</p>
<p>Over the past year, Israel has <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/israel-attacked-syria-more-600-092821030.html">launched</a>
more than 600 air, drone, or artillery attacks across Syria, averaging
nearly two attacks a day, according to a tally by the Armed Conflict
Location and Event Data project. </p>
<p>Syria\u2019s southern regions, including Quneitra, have long <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/05/syria-israels-deliberate-destruction-of-civilian-homes-in-quneitra-war-crime/">witnessed</a>
Israeli territorial violations, sowing fear, detaining civilians,
erecting checkpoints and gates, and destroying farmland, but the pace of
detention since December 2024 has no precedent in the area\u2019s modern
history.</p>
<h2>The detentions no one is counting</h2>
<p>Hayam al-Aryan, a schoolteacher in Ghadir al-Bustan in Quneitra, is
still being treated for wounds she sustained when Israeli forces broke
down her door after midnight in February, releasing an attack dog that
climbed onto her bed and bit her face as she slept.</p>
<p>\u201cI woke up terrified, with the dog standing over me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was biting my face while I was still in bed.\u201d</p>
<p>The same dog also mauled her 19-year-old son, Hamza, a student at a
vocational institute, as he was forced to kneel naked toward the wall.
Her older son, Ali, in his final school year, was taken to another room.</p>
<p>\u201cHamza was screaming, telling them to take the dog off him,\u201d she
said. \u201cI was screaming, too. The neighbors came out, but no one had any
weapons. They [Israeli forces] took both boys and drove them away.\u201d</p>
<p>Both sons were detained. Their family has had no contact with them since February.</p>
<p>\u201cThe state is silent,\u201d she told <em>Mondoweiss</em>. \u201cThe media is silent. We are the only ones still asking where our children are.\u201d</p>
<p>Detentions are extremely commonplace. On May 20, <a href="https://sana.sy/en/syria/2318038/">two young men</a>
from the villages of Bassala and Umm al-Luqus were detained at Israeli
flying checkpoints. On the morning of May 24, university student
Muhammad Tareq Mariwid was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA9BnURe5p0">taken</a> from Jubatha al-Khashab. </p>
<p>According to Ahmad al-Hassan, a local teacher, author, and researcher
with a particular interest in documenting the history and heritage of
the Golan region, there is no official tally of those held. No office
accepts inquiries. No international body, neither the International
Committee of the Red Cross, nor the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, nor the UN
Disengagement Observer Force, has been allowed access. </p>
<p>Syria\u2019s post-Assad government has <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/syria-administration-condemns-israeli-incursions-181549718.html?guccounter=1">condemned</a>
Israel\u2019s actions in and around Quneitra on several occasions, though
always through words rather than force. After an Israeli strike killed
three people in the south, the country\u2019s new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa,
said Israel had pushed into the UN buffer zone under the pretext of
confronting Iranian militias, an excuse he argued no longer held once
Damascus was liberated, and declared Syria ready to welcome
international forces into the zone. In August 2025, the Foreign Ministry
<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/25/syria-condemns-new-israeli-military-incursion-in-damascus-countryside">condemned</a>
a fresh incursion in the southwestern Damascus countryside near
Quneitra, accusing Israel of violating the 1974 disengagement agreement
to advance its \u201cexpansionist and partition plans\u201d and calling it a grave
threat to regional peace. </p>
<p>The ministry issued <a href="https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2025/08/syrian-foreign-ministry-condemns-israeli-incursion-in-damascus-countryside/?so=related">similar protests</a> over the <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/israel-is-violating-all-its-ceasefire-agreements-and-escalating-on-all-fronts/">Beit Jinn operation</a>,
while repeatedly affirming Syria\u2019s own commitment to the 1974 accord.
Yet for residents of Quneitra\u2019s frontline villages, who have watched
Israeli forces raze homes, dig fortifications, and seal off roads since
December 2024, the statements ring hollow. Many say the government\u2019s
condemnations have changed nothing on the ground, and that words from
Damascus are no substitute for an end to the incursions reshaping their
daily lives.</p>
<p>Fadel Abdul Ghani, head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said
his organization has approached the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.</p>
<p>\u201cThe problem we face is that Israel does not fall within the High
Commissioner\u2019s Syria mandate as an occupying power,\u201d he said. \u201cIn
practice, the most effective channel remains coordination with the
International Committee of the Red Cross, as the only body with a
traditional mandate to access detainees. But access to detainees is
effectively suspended because of non-response from the Israeli
authorities.\u201d</p>
<img width="454" height="255" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_0934-1024x576.jpg" alt="Quneitera, Syria, where Israeli forces have progressively seized more land. (Photo courtesy of author)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">Quneitera, Syria, where Israeli forces have progressively seized more land. (Photo courtesy of author)
<h2>Detention is one method. Killing is another. </h2>
<p>In April, 17-year-old Osama Ahmad, who requested anonymity for fear
of retaliation, was driving along an agricultural road between Ras
al-Zaarura and the village of al-Rafid, checking on his family\u2019s
livestock, when an artillery shell struck the car and burned him inside
it. His father has not been able to leave the grief of his son\u2019s death.</p>
<p>Bassel al-Khatib, 15, was hit by a sniper\u2019s bullet through the
windscreen of a car as he traveled with his uncle to work near
al-Hamidiya. He survived, but the bullet took his sight. He has
undergone a series of expensive operations to fit a glass eye, with his
family selling their sawmill and moving to find work farther from the
Israeli line.</p>
<p>These incidents have not faced any accountability, according to
al-Aryan, the schoolteacher, who, along with the mothers of other
detainees, protested outside the UN office in Damascus on April 19 to no
avail.</p>
<p>An Amnesty International report issued in May <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/05/syria-israels-deliberate-destruction-of-civilian-homes-in-quneitra-war-crime/">described</a>
the demolition of homes in Quneitra as a grave violation of the Fourth
Geneva Convention and called for an investigation of Israeli actions as
war crimes \u2013 but Abdul Ghani said the report stopped short of where it
needed to go.</p>
<p>\u201cThe report addressed the violations as standalone acts, without
framing them as consequences of a prior violation, the unlawful entry
into the buffer zone itself,\u201d he said. \u201cProving the earlier violation
reframes every subsequent act, including the demolitions, as the
downstream consequence of an illegal occupation.\u201d</p>
<h2>A poisoned land and stolen water </h2>
<p>Earlier this year, Israeli forces <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260218-israel-spraying-herbicides-syrian-crops">sprayed</a>
chemical agents across farmland along the border strip. Soil tests
carried out by Quneitra\u2019s agricultural directorate, headed by Muhammad
Rahhal, identified the substances as toxic pesticides that have
collapsed ground cover, killed pasture, and forced livestock farmers to
sell off part of their herds because fodder costs have become
unbearable.</p>
<p>\u201cThe soil analysis showed these are toxic pesticides,\u201d Rahhal told <em>Mondoweiss</em>. \u201cThey eliminated ground vegetation and killed off the pasture, which forced herders to sell part of their livestock.\u201d</p>
<p>Roughly 4,000 dunams (988 acres) of orchard land have been damaged,
affecting 255 farmers. Olive tree leaves have dried out, threatening
flowering and fruiting for the entire season. Wheat and barley stalks
have yellowed in the sprayed zones. Women who depend on collecting wild
greens like mallow, dandelion, and wild mint for market income have lost
that crop too, as has the medicinal herb trade in wormwood, thyme, and
nettle that supplies traditional pharmacies.</p>
<img width="454" height="341" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/3.jpeg" alt="Ghadir al-Bustan and her 19-year-old son were mauled by an Israeli army dog The same dog when Israeli forces broke into their home in the Syrian border town of Quneitra. (Photo courtesy of author)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">Women
who rely on income from picking wild herbs were impacted by Israel\u2019s
spraying of chemical agents across Syrian farmland. (Photo courtesy of
author)
<p>Muhammad Daoud, head of the beekeepers\u2019 association in Quneitra, said
the spraying has affected his sector due to the disappearance of wild
plants on which bees depend.</p>
<p>\u201cThe loss of plant cover and the chemical residue have lowered the
quantity of honey produced,\u201d he explains. \u201cFamily incomes have dropped,
prices have risen, and demand has fallen at the same time.\u201d</p>
<p>Water expert Arsan Arsan fears the spraying will reach groundwater as the toxins leach through the soil. </p>
<p>Bassam al-Shamali, the head of the irrigation authority, has said the
water remains safe, but Arsan\u2019s concern is borne out by Lebanese
laboratory and media reports finding glyphosate, a herbicide classified
as probably carcinogenic by <a href="https://www.iarc.who.int/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-news-glyphosate/">the World Health Organization</a>, in samples from the same spraying operations that crossed the Blue Line into Lebanese territory.</p>
<p>\u201cWhat we are seeing now is the early stage,\u201d Arsan concluded. \u201cThe
toxic compounds take time to move through the soil profile and into the
aquifer. By the time the tests confirm it, the damage will already be
done.\u201d</p>
<p>Arsan also believes Israel is preparing to siphon Quneitra\u2019s
groundwater by drilling deeper artesian wells into the occupied Golan to
supply planned new settlements, a continuation of a pattern that runs
from the draining of the Hula marshes in the 1950s through the Johnson
Plan and the building of the Quneitra dam.</p>
<p>\u201cTheir history of stealing water is long,\u201d he adds. \u201cBen Gurion said
in 1948 that our war with the Arabs is a war over water. The Jewish
Agency\u2019s letter to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference insisted on no
concessions regarding Israel\u2019s rights to the Golan and the Hauran Plain.
This is the same logic working its way through new infrastructure.\u201d</p>
<p>Israeli forces have blocked residents from approaching the al-Mantara
dam, the largest in the area, and the project that was supposed to pump
part of its water to the Damascus countryside has been suspended.
Israeli operations have concentrated in the Yarmouk basin and the Wadi
al-Ruqqad area, which has been shelled multiple times, most recently on
May 23.</p>
<p>In Bir Ajam, southeast of Quneitra city, the spring tourist season
has collapsed. Fouad Ibrahim, the head of the municipality, said the
village\u2019s reservoirs at Ruwaihina and Briqa once drew thousands of
visitors for their natural beauty. Now, only the residents who farm or
hold government jobs remain. The pastures have been confiscated.
Hundreds of dunams of farmland are unreachable behind newly raised
earthen berms. </p>
<p>\u201cThe earthen berm they\u2019re still building has fixed new Israeli
positions and carved off around eight kilometers of village land, to a
depth of 150 to 200 meters,\u201d Ibrahim explains. \u201cThat\u2019s roughly four
thousand dunams gone.\u201d</p>
<p>A UN observation post sits on the Bir Ajam hill. Israel has erected a
military position beside it with an anti-missile battery that was
active during the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, deepening local fears and
emptying the village of its visitors. Even residents originally from the
village who now live elsewhere have stopped coming home.</p>
<p>The collapse has had a cascading effect on Bir Ajam\u2019s economy, and
the traditional Circassian cheese-making workshops have lost the tourism
that sustained them. </p>
<p>Flying Israeli checkpoints have lengthened the routes dairy producers
must take. Issam Saleh, who oversees a dairy workshop, said he sees up
to 100 liters of milk spoiled in a single summer day when refrigeration
breaks down on the long detours.</p>
<p>\u201cThis is the situation across most of Quneitra,\u201d he told <em>Mondoweiss</em>. \u201cWe are losing the product before it ever reaches the market.\u201d</p>
<img width="454" height="255" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_0936-1024x576.jpg" alt="Quneitera, Syria, where Israeli forces have progressively seized more land. (Photo courtesy of author)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">Quneitera, Syria, where Israeli forces have progressively seized more land. (Photo courtesy of author)
<h2>The settlers behind the bulldozers</h2>
<p>Israeli efforts to rewrite the geography of Quneitra to serve its own purposes go further. Project <a href="https://www.syriahr.com/en/382530/">Sofa 53</a>,
also called the Great Storm, is a network of wide military roads,
earthen berms, trenches, observation posts, and forward outposts that
Israel began in 2022 and accelerated after December 2024. Israel
describes it as its first line of defense and attack. </p>
<p>According to Bir Ajam\u2019s municipality, one kilometer of construction remains before the project is complete within Quneitra.</p>
<p>Bulldozer excavations have run from Hadar village in the north to
Saida in the south, converging through Ruwaihina, Qahtaniya, Bir Ajam,
Koudana, and al-Hamidiya. Israeli forces have established mobile
checkpoints between the village of Jabah and the town of Khan Arnabah,
searched passersby, and crossed tanks into al-Hamidiya in central
Quneitra as the network expands. Work continues in Daraa.</p>
<p>Arsan denounced Sofa 53 as a violation of international law and the
opening phase of an implementation of what Israeli strategists call the
\u201cDavid Corridor.\u201d</p>
<p>\u201cThis is the architecture of a new territorial reality,\u201d he said.</p>
<p>Abdul Ghani framed it as the gradual annexation of Syrian land before
any formal declaration, the same pattern that Israel has carried out in
the occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>\u201cThey are creating a unilateral buffer zone that reaches between 500
meters and one kilometer into Syrian territory,\u201d he added. \u201cThey are
demolishing homes without military necessity. These are the markers of
permanent presence, not circumstantial intervention.\u201d </p>
<p>The one-sided demining operations Israel has carried out across the
strip of land in Quneitra lack any international legal basis. The 1997
Ottawa Convention obliges states to clear their own territory of mines,
but does not authorize a second party to conduct clearance operations
within another state\u2019s sovereign territory without that state\u2019s consent.
Israel is, conveniently, not a party to the convention.</p>
<p>Israeli settlers have already arrived. Five attempted settler
incursions into Quneitra have taken place under the watch of both the
Israeli army and Syrian General Security forces. The settlers belong to
the Bashan Pioneers, an extremist movement founded in 2025 for the
express purpose of settling Syrian land. The most recent attempt on May
17 involved settlers tying themselves to the wall demarcating the buffer
zone. The largest, in late April, <a href="https://www.arabnews.jp/en/middle-east/article_168748/">brought</a> 40 settlers to the region.</p>
<p>The settler group posted a <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-settlers-raise-flag-over-occupied-syrian-village">photo</a>
on X showing members standing on a rooftop and said they intended to
remain there until Israeli authorities allowed their families to move in
and establish a civilian presence \u2014 a move that, like in the West Bank,
is illegal under international law.</p>
<p>The caption read: \u201cWithout civilian settlement, even the military
hold won\u2019t last long term. We\u2019re here until they approve our families to
enter and live here.\u201d</p>
<p>Al-Hassan argues that the movement enjoys security cover from the
Israeli army and shares an interest in altering the geography and
demographic composition of the region by creating conditions to displace
the local population, a reminder of what happened in Palestine in 1948.</p>
<p>\u201cThe repeated incursion into Syrian territory is not random,\u201d he
said. \u201cIt is bait. It is meant to draw out Israeli expansion in the
region and to pressure the Syrian state in any future security
agreement.\u201d</p>
<p><em>This story was produced in collaboration with </em><a href="http://www.egab.co/"><em>Egab</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Hudda Mattar</strong><br>Hudda Mattar is a Syrian journalist,
children\u2019s program producer, and documentary filmmaker, with a focus on
cultural and political affairs.</p>
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