Natacha Danon writes:

Early last month, Abed, 45, was harvesting zucchini in the fertile valley of Syria’s southwestern Houran region when military vehicles barreled through the fields, kicking up dust and crushing his crops.

“They surrounded us, and of course we couldn’t understand them because they spoke Hebrew. They took us in cars, blindfolded us, and brought us to the Israeli border,” he says, gesturing with his weathered hands toward a hill, its ridge sparsely lined with trees. His name and that of others in this essay were changed for security reasons. The village, situated between the occupied Golan Heights and Jordan, now finds itself under the watchful eyes of Israeli forces stationed atop the ridge.

For seven hours, Abed and seven other farmers were interrogated by Israeli soldiers. “They asked us if people [in the village] were armed and whether we had [Islamic State group], Hezbollah or Iranian fighters among us. We told them that we are a community dependent on agriculture,” he adds.

Israeli forces have also been active in neighboring villages, such as Maariya, carrying out raids and arrest campaigns. In one instance, a farmer was detained indefinitely, his whereabouts still unknown, according to the head of Kawaya municipality.

Since the rapid collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime last December at the hands of opposition factions, Israel has moved swiftly to reshape the contours of power in Syria’s south. Within 24 hours of the regime’s fall on Dec. 8, Israeli forces invaded the 150-square-mile demilitarized buffer zone separating Syria and Israel, violating a 1974 ceasefire agreement. They also carried out a blitz of airstrikes on military sites across southern Syria and the rest of the country.

In the months since, Israeli forces have continued to make inroads into Quneitra and Daraa provinces, seizing strategic military points and building outposts. In Daraa, residents of Kawaya and Maariya have come into direct contact with the Israeli military, which has limited access to their lands and vital water resources by seizing a major dam. [Continue reading…]