Israeli troops raid a village in Quneitra and detain two, hours before the army chief's visit

Syrian state television reported that Israeli forces entered the village of Jabata al-Khashab, in Quneitra province in the southwest of Syria, early on Wednesday, searched homes and left with two residents. It put the size of the force at more than 100 soldiers and 15 vehicles.

Later that day an Israeli newspaper reported that the army's chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, had visited troops deployed in southern Syria, accompanied by senior officers. He was briefed on the security situation and met reserve units stationed in the area, according to the report.

The two items describe the same arrangement from opposite ends. Sending a company-sized force to search houses in one village, and holding ground there steadily enough for reserve units to be visited by a chief of staff, are the marks of a position being administered rather than a raid being mounted and withdrawn from.

Israeli troops moved into the buffer zone separating the two sides in late 2024, after the fall of the previous Syrian government, and have held positions beyond it since. The 1974 agreement that created the zone has not been observed on the ground since then, and searches, arrests and checkpoints on the roads between villages are now recorded across southern Syria on most days.

Syria has set out its objection in two letters to the United Nations, saying the attacks undermine efforts to stabilise the country and threaten wider tension, and demanding withdrawal from the areas entered after 8 December 2024 as well as from the occupied Golan Heights. UN observers carried out a field assessment this week in al-Rafid, another Quneitra village searched by Israeli forces earlier in the month.

The two men taken from Jabata al-Khashab were not named and no reason for their detention was given. Villages in the province have no way to establish where residents are held or when they might return, which is the part of a near-daily incursion that outlasts it.