Guardian:

Israeli troops shoot Syrian protester as forces move beyond buffer zone

Villagers say Israel’s forces have sown ‘fear and horror’ as they continue to expand into Syria’s territory

Agence France-Presse

Sat 21 Dec 2024 14.07 AEDT

The Israeli military said its forces shot a protester during a demonstration against the army’s activities in a village in southern Syria on Friday, injuring him in the leg.

Since Islamist-led rebels toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on 8 December Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military facilities in what it says is a bid to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.

In a move widely condemned internationally, Israel also sent troops into a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights and beyond, calling it a defensive and temporary measure.

“During a protest against IDF’s activities in the area of Maariya in southern Syria, IDF [the Israeli military] called on protesters to distance themselves from the troops,” the military told Agence France-Presse.

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The village is just outside the southern point of the UN-patrolled zone.

“After the troops identified a threat, they operated in accordance with standard operating procedures against the threat … The protester was shot in the leg,” the military said.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the Israeli troops were stationed at a barracks in the village.

“During a protest condemning the Israeli incursion, a young man was injured by Israeli forces’ gunfire in the village of Maariya, in the Daraa region,” the observatory said.

Israeli forces from Al Jazeera barracks “opened fire directly at the demonstrators”, wounding the man in the leg, it said.

A villager from Maariya told AFP that Israeli soldiers had been entering his village and other nearby villages in recent days.

“When the Israelis entered … they sowed fear and horror among the people, the children, the women,” Ali al-Khalaf, 52, said.

“So much so that some people fled to other nearby villages. They [Israeli troops] entered the villages of Maariya, Aabdyn and Jamlah.”

On Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled zone. During the visit the Israeli prime minister reviewed the army’s deployment in the area, his office said.

Hours after Assad was overthrown, Netanyahu had ordered Israeli troops to seize the buffer zone.

Israel has framed the move as temporary and defensive, with the prime minister saying it was in response to a “vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone”.

Israeli forces have also been operating in areas beyond the buffer zone in Syrian-controlled territory, the military has confirmed.

Netanyahu said his country had “no interest in confronting Syria. Israel’s policy toward Syria will be determined by the evolving reality on the ground”.

Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, accused Israel of “a new, unjustified escalation in the region” by entering the buffer zone but said “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war” prevents it from entering new conflicts.

Israel conquered about two-thirds of the Golan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it. The US, during Donald Trump’s first term as president, is the only country that has recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan.