Residents say incursions and raids have increased since forces first entered country a year ago after fall of Assad
On the day Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell, Abu Ibrahim and his family went to sleep wondering what sort of future awaited them in the morning. They woke in a panic, to the sound of gunfire and tanks.
The bullets announced the arrival of the Israeli military into the remote southern Syrian province of Quneitra on 9 December 2024. In the place of Assad militias who used to patrol the roads, bulky armoured personnel carriers filled with Israeli soldiers rumbled down the potholed streets, stopping to assure residents that they were there for their protection.
“When the Assad regime fell, we didn’t even get to celebrate – it fell over there while they entered from here,” said 52-year-old Ibrahim, working at a falafel shop in al-Qahtaniya, close to the Israeli border.
The hard-fought freedom that reigns in the rest of Syria after 14 years of war is nowhere to be found here.
