BEIRUT — Israel entered the demilitarized buffer zone along the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights border within hours of Bashar al-Assad's government collapsing on Dec. 8, 2024, and has not left. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has demanded Israeli withdrawal but told his government that Syria cannot be drawn into fresh fighting after 13 years of civil war — a position that has defined Damascus's options ever since.
Israel initially described the buffer-zone occupation as temporary. It later revised that position, declaring the presence would continue for an unlimited period. At the same time, Israel declared the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement — the ceasefire framework that created the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, known as UNDOF — to be null and void.
The occupation expanded the territory under Israeli control by several hundred square miles. That buffer zone had been maintained by UNDOF since 1974 to separate Israeli and Syrian forces after the Yom Kippur War. The UN had already accused Israel, before Assad fell, of violating the 1974 agreement in November 2024 with engineering work and battle tanks operating inside the demilitarized zone. UNDOF said it had repeatedly raised the matter with Israeli authorities.
Israel's military campaign since Dec. 8 has gone well beyond the buffer zone. The operation included aerial and naval strikes on Syrian military infrastructure across the country. The strikes destroyed Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles and crippled what remained of the Syrian army and navy — the institutions that had propped up the Assad government for decades.
The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project reported that by December 2025, Israel had carried out attacks inside Syria more than 600 times since the invasion began, an average of nearly twice per day. Military analysts said the scale ranks among the most intensive Israeli air campaigns on Syrian soil since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
On Feb. 25, 2025, Israel deepened its ground presence in southern Syria and launched a wave of airstrikes on targets there and in Damascus. The escalation came one day after Israel demanded that Syria's caretaker government remove its military forces from the south. Syria did not comply, and the strikes followed.
Since clashes in Suwayda in July 2025, Israel has conducted additional airstrikes on Syrian military positions, citing the protection of the Syrian Druze population as justification. Israel has not provided independent casualty figures, and Damascus has disputed the framing.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli argued that rebel forces controlling Syrian territory were aligned with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and called on Israel to reinforce its defensive line at Mount Hermon along the 1974 border. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterized the fall of the Assad government as a geopolitical shift in the Middle East.
The campaign drew widespread international condemnation and accusations of violations of international law. The occupation of the Golan Heights has itself been a source of prolonged dispute: Israel seized most of the region during the 1967 Six-Day War, annexed it in 1981 in a move the United Nations rejected, and held it without international recognition until the United States recognized the annexation in 2019.
Al-Sharaa's government is working to build diplomatic relationships and attract reconstruction investment, a process that Israeli strikes and the southern occupation directly complicate. Foreign governments and international institutions considering engagement with Damascus are watching whether Syria's new leadership can exercise sovereignty over its own territory. The continued Israeli military presence gives those governments reason to hesitate.
Al-Sharaa has been direct about the constraint: Syria will not start a war it cannot fight. The civil war that ended with Assad's ouster left the country's armed forces fractured, its economy in ruin, and its population exhausted. Picking a military confrontation with Israel in that environment carries obvious risks for a government that has not yet consolidated control.
U.S.-backed diplomatic efforts have sought to slow Israeli operations in both Syria and Lebanon, where Israeli forces have also conducted airstrikes and demolitions. Israel has continued its operations in both countries regardless, leaving U.S. mediators without a clear resolution.
