Shafaq News- Quneitra

On Saturday, the Israeli military forces conducted raids, erected checkpoints, and reinforced fixed positions across multiple axes in the Quneitra countryside in southern Syria.

Shafaq News correspondent reported that the Israeli troops deployed into the streets of Jabatha al-Khashab before carrying out house searches after midnight. Three trucks carrying prefabricated rooms also arrived at Tel Ahmar East in the southern Quneitra countryside, as a further expansion of an existing installation.

Intensive Israeli warplane activity was also recorded over the area throughout the day.

The Quneitra Media Directorate confirmed that the province had witnessed a 24-hour escalation involving a series of Israeli military movements across several axes. Three military vehicles accompanied by an ambulance entered the village of Samdaniyeh al-Sharqiya, while a temporary Israeli checkpoint was established between the village and al-Ajraf town. Israeli forces also took up position inside an abandoned house east of al-Samdaniyeh al-Sharqiya, near Tel Krum, from the early morning hours until the evening.

In Tal al-Ahmar al-Sharqi, an Israeli force comprising two tanks and two military vehicles subsequently entered the area late Saturday, taking up positions inside the prefabricated structures delivered to the site the previous day.

Field sources told Shafaq News that Israeli forces transferred three prefabricated rooms to Tel Ahmar al-Sharqi on April 17, as part of the expansion of a base established at the site following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government and the subsequent advance of Israeli forces into the buffer zone. The position carries strategic significance due to its location along the separation line, the sources said. The surrounding area had previously come under Israeli artillery fire.

Tel Ahmar East sits within the buffer zone established under the 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria, a strip monitored by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). Under that agreement, only UN peacekeepers are authorized to operate within the separation area; military construction or fortification by either party is prohibited.

Wider Pattern of Expansion

Saturday's movements form part of a documented pattern of Israeli military entrenchment in southern Syria that accelerated sharply after the fall of al-Assad's government on December 8, 2024.

A satellite imagery analysis published in February 2026 by Al Jazeera's digital investigations unit found that Israeli forces had established control over 235 square kilometers inside the buffer zone and recorded more than 800 ground incursion points inside Syrian territory, one of which reached within 20 kilometers of Damascus.

The same analysis documented the construction of nine permanent military positions and more than 32 kilometers of defensive fortifications, parts of which extended more than 1,200 meters into the buffer zone.

Among those positions, the installation on the summit of Mount Hermon —Jabal al-Sheikh— is the most strategically significant. Its elevation provides simultaneous observation capacity over the Jordan Valley and Galilee to the west and the eastern approaches to Damascus.

Israeli forces have also crossed the Alpha Line —the boundary between Israeli-occupied territory and the buffer zone— advancing to the Bravo Line on the Syrian side, in breach of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement, the analysis found.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 620 Israeli ground incursions between December 2024 and February 2026, describing the period as one of the most dangerous since the conflict began and citing the absence of any effective deterrent response. The observatory noted that Quneitra and Daraa provinces have borne the heaviest burden of these operations, with repeated incursions accompanied by temporary checkpoints, home raids, arrests, and direct damage to agricultural land and civilian infrastructure.

The Syrian government has repeatedly called for a full Israeli withdrawal from positions occupied after al-Assad's fall, describing it as a prerequisite for any negotiations over a potential security arrangement. Israeli officials have stated they intend to remain in those positions on national security grounds.

Read more: Syria's shifting stance: Is normalization with Israel on the horizon?