The tanks roll in at night when the power shuts down, criss-crossing Madinat al-Baath’s main streets and ensuring the residents of this corner of southwestern Syria remember they are not alone.
Locals have grown accustomed to nightly patrols, which have destroyed their roads and pavements, crushed their agricultural land and broken through the gates of local government buildings, newly defaced with fresh graffiti in a language they can’t read.
“The tanks are everywhere,” said Fatima, a teacher in the town, the provincial capital of Quneitra province. “We don’t go out at night any more because of them.”
The vehicles belong neither to the new rulers in Damascus, nor any of the country’s myriad armed factions, but to their neighbour: Israel.
Since Islamist rebels led by Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December, Israel has embarked on an aggressive military campaign in Syria, seizing a five-decade old buffer zone “indefinitely”, bombing what it says are military targets and encroaching on towns and villages like Madinat al-Baath.
Over the past week, Israeli leaders have heightened tensions further, decrying Syria’s new leaders as a “terrorist regime of radical Islam” and threatening a broader offensive if the government harms the Druze minority community.
This is despite the fact that Sharaa’s young administration has neither threatened nor taken provocative action against Israel. The new leaders have consistently sought to engage the west and regional powers, saying they are focused not on new conflict but rebuilding and unifying the country after more than 13 years of civil war.
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At the heart of Israel’s belligerent actions in Syria, however, is what appears to be a new plan to remake Israel’s borders and the balance of power with its neighbours.
Following Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack — when high walls, a vaunted air force, and revered intelligence system failed to stop militants rampaging into southern Israel — authorities have set about dramatically expanding and hardening Israel’s frontiers.
It has built a buffer zone inside Gaza, seized five strategic hilltops in southern Lebanon, garrisoned troops inside West Bank refugee camps, and created a wide “security area” across southwestern Syria. The fundamental lesson is that you “can’t let a terror army build [up] at your door”, said a senior Israeli military official.
Israel is “proactively upping the ante in the region, trying to eliminate any potential risks, and they’re willing to take a lot of risk in doing so and to really push the envelope more than they have in the past”, said Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group.
The residents of Madinat al-Baath and nearby communities, home to thousands of people, are bearing the brunt. Israeli forces have enacted a de facto occupation in at least two villages, destroying government buildings, undertaking a local census and registering IDs as well as seizing weapons, according to residents who spoke to the Financial Times. FT reporters also saw Israeli tank positions and freshly constructed berms.
Israeli troops have also begun distributing aid parcels to residents — including rice, blankets, oil and canned goods — and proffered agricultural jobs in Israel to residents impoverished by years of war and economic crisis. This has left many locals weighing their rising hunger and desperation against the dangers of being labelled traitors if they engage.
“If things stay like this, if work doesn’t pick up again and we don’t get paid, people are going to have to go work in Israel, aren’t they?” said Mohammad, a young man from the village of Hamidiyeh, where Israeli forces are present. “What other choice do they have?”
In the power vacuum that followed Assad’s fall, Israel’s air force conducted a massive aerial campaign across Syria, striking hundreds of targets including heavy weapons, air defence systems and naval vessels, decimating what remained of Assad’s army. In Sweida, the FT saw a military site that was struck in December, its weapon depots levelled, unexploded munitions poking out of the rubble.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, emboldened by a string of military successes against Israel’s foes over the past 16 months, went further last month and demanded “the complete demilitarisation of southern Syria”.
Israeli forces have built fortifications and outposts, according to the FT’s analysis of satellite imagery, expanding on defences they erected last year. They have also struck more targets, including what it claimed were weapons belonging to the deposed regime in the northern Assad heartland of Qardaha on Monday.
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Israel’s encroachment poses a threat to Syria’s transitional government, Khalifa said, “creating a lot of public pressure on the authorities in Damascus to become more aggressive in pushing back against the Israelis, which could only fuel the cycle of violence”.
Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, denounced Israel’s “aggressive expansion” at an Arab League summit on Tuesday, calling it “a direct threat to safety and security in the area as a whole” and warning it would “undermine [the] stability of the region”.
But the transitional government, which has yet to engage formally with its neighbour, has shown little capacity or appetite to confront Israel. Many in communities like Madinat al-Baath, where most residents were government employees under Assad, fear the new government is punishing them for not having stood with the revolution.
Israel has also portrayed its campaign as an effort to protect the Druze community in southern Syria, with defence minister Israel Katz saying on Saturday that Israel would “not allow” Damascus “to harm the Druze”. If it does, he warned, “it will be harmed by us”.
The Druze, an ethnically Arab minority who trace their religion back to 11th century Egypt, number about 1mn across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel, many connected across borders by family ties.
Syria’s Druze sat out the revolution that erupted in 2011 against Assad, alienated by the largely Islamist leadership of the various opposition factions. In 2015, Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda linked group founded by Sharaa, killed some 20 Druze in the north, in the Qalb Loze massacre.
Both Assad and the new state, overburdened with crises, have largely allowed the Druze to rule themselves. Sharaa’s administration, which has called on all factions in Syria to lay down arms, has permitted the Druze in Sweida to hold on to their weapons.
Many in Syria’s Druze community have rejected Netanyahu’s vow to protect them as a ploy.
“Israel is making these statements to protect itself,” said Yahya al-Hajjar, leader of the prominent Druze Rijal al-Karama movement in Sweida. “It’s taking an interest in minorities, as it claims, in order to benefit from them.”
“We did not ask Netanyahu to . . . take care of the Druze,” Hajjar said, speaking from his house in the village of Shannira in Sweida province. “We reject any division project that is trying to be forced on the country.”
The community is deeply wary of being weaponised by Israel. On Friday, a fight broke out in the central al-Karama Square in Sweida city during a protest against the Israeli intervention. Young men who raised anti-Sharaa signs were chased away by protesters who — while wary of the new ruler themselves — dubbed the men saboteurs and mercenaries paid by Israel.
Israel “is working on destroying the society here in order to protect itself and use us as a shield to protect their interests,” said Nabil Jaha, an engineer who attended the protest. He added that hungry Syrians may turn to Israel now, but will regret it in the future.
“We’re not afraid of anyone [and don’t need] someone to come protect us,” said Atef Eyman, a dentist who also attended the protest. “What [Israel] wants is a failed state.”
