“Israel is closely monitoring the situation in Syria, and will not jeopardize its own security,” Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, said this month. “We will not allow another Oct. 7 on any front.”
Syria’s new leadership has criticized the Israeli military moves. Critics abroad, including several Arab states and France, have called Israel’s actions a violation of the decades-long truce and called on Israel to withdraw. Egypt accused Israel of “exploiting Syria’s current instability to expand its territorial control and impose a new reality on the ground.”
Israel’s officials say they will only withdraw after “new arrangements” are in place along the border. Given the chaotic internal situation in Syria, that could take months or even longer.
In Kodana, a small Syrian village just outside the buffer zone, Israeli armored vehicles arrived just a few days after Mr. al-Assad’s fall, according to the mayor, Maher al-Tahan. He said the Israeli troops told village leaders to broadcast a message over mosque loudspeakers ordering Kodana’s roughly 800 residents to turn over any weapons.
Since then, the Israeli military has brought generators and set up makeshift barracks in the hills overlooking Kodana, he said. But since most of Kodana’s wells sit on those hilltops, he and other residents said, they have turned to buying expensive trucked-in water rather than pumping it out of the ground.
“The Israeli military must leave as soon as possible,” Mr. al-Tahan said. “As long as they stay here, the problems on both sides will simply continue to grow.”
