On the Syrian border with Israel: ‘The troops threatened to do the same thing to us as in Gaza’

When Israeli troops arrived in the Syrian village of Suesa, at the foot of the Golan Heights, last Wednesday, residents immediately organized a peaceful demonstration demanding that they withdraw. “For 30 minutes, we stood in front of the soldiers shouting slogans like ‘Free Syria, Israel out!’ They threatened us: ‘If you don’t go home, we will do to you the same as we did to those in Gaza...’ Then, suddenly, without even a stone being thrown at them, they opened fire,” recalls Aymen al-Awad. The 46-year-old farmer is one of seven people who were wounded by bullets that day, an example of the tensions in the area after Israel took advantage of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime to extend its occupation of the Golan Heights — Syrian territory partly taken by Israel in 1967 — by several hundred square miles.

Al-Awad, who is limping noticeably, was not the worst off. About 15 bullet fragments hit his right leg after the projectile ricocheted off the ground or a wall. The same happened to three other protesters, all of whom are convalescing at home. But three other villagers were directly hit by the bullets and are still in hospital in Damascus. In the most serious condition is a 15-year-old boy, whose lungs were pierced by a round. “The doctor decided to wait 10 days to see how the wounds develop before deciding whether to operate or not,” said the farmer, sitting in the humble dining room of his house. The resistance of the Suesa residents served at least to force the withdrawal of the 50 soldiers and their armored vehicles.

The inhabitants of Quneitra province were unable to join in the celebrations in other regions following the collapse of the dictatorship on December 8. “The next day, the [Israeli] soldiers came asking if we had weapons or if there were Hezbollah militants. We told them no, and that they could go now,” explains Hail al-Abdala, the mukhtar — a figure whose functions are somewhere between those of a mayor and a local dignitary — of the village of Hamidie, which is one of the seven towns recently occupied by Israel. Others, like Suesa, are located in a border area with an ambiguous layout, as Israeli troops have expanded it several times in recent days and also carried out raids in villages under the control of Damascus in search of weapons.

Israel occupied much of the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War in 1967, but it was not until after another war in 1974 that it signed an armistice with Damascus establishing a demilitarized perimeter on the Syrian side, which is the territory it has now invaded. Since then, a U.N. mission of some 1,200 peacekeepers has monitored compliance with the agreement. These troops withdrew after the recent Israeli offensive.

Israeli abuses

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that troops will remain on Syrian soil until a security agreement is reached with the new government. In addition, the Israeli army carried out some 500 airstrikes in Syria in the second week of December, most of them targeting military installations. The latest airstrike took place on Saturday outside Damascus against a weapons depot, killing at least two people. The U.N. considers both the 1967 occupation and the hostile acts of recent weeks to be a violation of international law.

From conversations with around 20 residents from different villages in the area, a litany of complaints about abuses by Israeli soldiers emerge. In the village of Hurriye, the soldiers gave residents just one hour to leave their homes. In Kodana, they destroyed a couple of houses and a water pipe, and shot an employee who was repairing the electrical line in the leg.

“In Hamidie, they destroyed several public buildings and confiscated all kinds of equipment, including computers… Now, most of the displaced people have returned to their homes. But the soldiers only let us in and out of the village between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., which is a serious problem for students and those who work outside,” says Al-Abdala, an elegant old man with piercing blue eyes. “Children are the ones who suffer the most from the situation, because of the stress caused by the presence of soldiers and tanks,” says Abir Rueli, a young pediatrician.

The Israeli invasion has led to disruption or interruption of some basic services, such as cell phone coverage, bread distribution, and above all, the flow of electricity and running water. “We have not had water for 20 days. The Israelis have occupied the two wells that were used to supply our seven villages,” complains Shaher, a pensioner from Kodana who last Saturday, along with more than 200 other people from the region, attended the first public meeting with citizens organised in Quneitra by the interim government in Damascus.

The highest authority who went to the Quneitra Cultural Center, just 300 meters from a threatening Israeli tank, was the bearded Abu Bara, military chief of the southern region of the country. During the question and answer session, a good part of the interventions revolved around the hostile Israeli presence. “We are in contact with Damascus and we hope, step by step, to be able to solve the problems with our neighbor,” Abu Bara said simply.

The fact that he referred to Israel as a “neighbor,” while all other interventions used the term “enemy,” raised some suspicions in the room. The same reaction was provoked by statements made two days earlier by the new governor of Damascus, in which he assured that the new government had “no problem with Israel” and did not want to “do anything that would threaten” its security.

On social media, some critics of the ruling Islamist militia, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), question its patriotism, suggesting that its moderate tone toward the Israeli occupation is due to secret agreements with the Israeli government or Washington. However, secular analyst Ammar Abdulhamid defends the government’s approach: “Since war with Israel is not an option, what alternative to diplomacy do we have?”

Interestingly, HTS leader Ahmed al-Shara’s nom de guerre is Al-Julani — or Al-Golani — because his family is originally from the Golan Heights and was among those forced to flee their homes by the 1967 invasion. “I know his family. They are good people. But so far, we have not been able to meet him,” mukhtar Al-Abdala says with a hint of bitterness.

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