yrian journalist Oudai Efnikher is deeply familiar with life under Israeli occupation. He was born in Kafer Hareb, a village in Syria’s Golan Heights, from which he and his family were expelled after Israel seized the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Now he is once again facing down Israeli forces, as they “take our land, kill our crops, and abduct our fathers.”
“This is a slow occupation, but soon, we will lose what they have not yet taken,” Efnikher told Truthout.
After Bashar al-Assad was ousted by Syrian rebels in December 2024, Israeli forces wasted no time before launching a massive aerial bombardment campaign on the country, destroying almost 80 percent of the military capacity left behind by the Assad regime.
Israeli forces also entered the demilitarized buffer zone established by a UN Security Council resolution in 1974 between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. They seized the territory and then established a “security buffer” beyond the last demarcation line administered by UN observer forces.
The area now under Israeli military control is off-limits to Syrian civilians and government forces. Farmers have been unable to tend to their land, and landowners have little hope they will ever be able to access it again
In total, Israel now occupies an additional 177 square miles of Syrian territory than it did before the fall of Assad.
“Maybe Israel will take it all. They already have a safe zone in southern Syria, so that could ultimately be the best option for Israel,” Syrian political analyst Issam Khoury told Truthout.
But what is most concerning for Efnikher is not the Israeli military’s presence in Syria, but what has become regular incursions by Israeli settlers.
On April 22, a group of roughly 40 settlers affiliated with the far right Halutzei HaBashan movement, or the Pioneers of Bashan — a reference to the name in the Torah for the fertile territory located northeast of the Sea of Galilee, which the Torah says was once ruled by the tyrant King Og before Moses defeated him — entered Syrian territory and asked the Israeli government to legalize settlement activity there.
Hellbound and Down 