Inside Israel’s Brazen Syria Land Grab: A Decades-Old Plan Comes to Life

Taking advantage of Syria’s instability, Israel pushes its borders into the Golan Heights and beyond, fulfilling long-held ambitions to redraw the map of the region.

Within hours of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s deposition, the Israeli military launched an unprecedented offensive that seized more land in the Golan Heights. Israel now openly seeks to implement a buffer zone plan that will seize more of Syria’s territory, a plot that has been over a decade in the making.

In February 2013, it was reported that the Israeli government had been presented with a “buffer zone” proposal that would extend as far as 10 miles into Syrian territory. This would, of course, mean violating the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria, which saw Israel withdraw from a series of areas in the Golan Heights.

Later on that same year, the U.S., along with its allies Israel and Jordan, sought to establish two separate buffer zone areas inside southern Syria. The first was set to extend from the West of Qatana and areas in the Damascus countryside down to the Jordan border, working to clear any Syrian presence from the Golan Heights. The second buffer zone was set to extend from Dara’a to Jabal Druze along the northern Jordanian border. This plan was to be enforced through the deployment of 20,000 American soldiers who would be stationed in Jordan.

This buffer zone model inside Syria was to be modeled on the “Good Fence” strategy implemented over two decades in southern Lebanon. Although Israel would eventually have its own forces stationed there, it would heavily rely on local militia forces to operate such a system. While this was labeled a “buffer zone” strategy, in reality, it amounted to a military occupation of Lebanese territory using right-wing Maronite Christian militias to do all the heavy lifting through the self-described “South Lebanon Army” (SLA).


In 1967, Israel illegally occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, which would end up triggering on-and-off violence between the two sides, as Israeli forces would routinely send settlers and military vehicles deeper into Syrian lands, attempting to expand their territorial control. Former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan even admitted that “Israel could be blamed for over 80 percent of the incidents which enflamed tensions around the demilitarized zones between Israel and Syria ahead of the 1967 War.”

During the 1973 “October War” that was launched by Syria and Egypt in a bid to recapture their own occupied territories from Israel, when the tide began turning militarily after Washington began aiding its allies in Tel Aviv, Israeli forces pushed even further into Syrian lands. The situation even triggered Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to send his army to reinforce Damascus as the situation grew dire for former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

Israel later annexed the Golan Heights, which was rejected by the international community, who deemed it illegal through the passing of United Nations Security Council resolution 497. Despite this condemnation, Tel Aviv was never punished for violating the binding resolution.

The war in Syria that began in 2011 then presented the Israelis with a new opportunity to claim territory that would solidify their control over the resource-rich Golan Heights. In 2013, while planning to secure a new buffer zone in southern Syria, Israel began providing support to at least a dozen opposition groups that were fighting against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

This support came in the form of propping up its own proxy group called “Forsan al-Julan” while providing light weapons, medical aid and financial support to a range of other armed militia that included the al-Nusra Front.

In recent years, the Israelis have been working on opening contacts with groups belonging to the Druze minority religious sect in southern Syria, even sending proposals to Moscow to create a Syrian Druze state bordering Israel. The Druze-led Syrian Liwa Party would then emerge from the area of Suwayda in 2020, swiftly opening a line of contact with the U.S., seeking to separate southern Syria from the rest of the country.

Israeli tanks continue to advance further into Syrian territory, meeting no resistance from the newly installed government in Damascus. That government has yet to offer any opposition to Israel’s invasion or its hundreds of airstrikes carried out across Syrian territory.  It appears that Israel’s long-sought-after goal of expanding its occupation into Syria has, for now, succeeded.

Feature photo | Syrian Druze watch as an Israeli armored vehicle crosses the security fence into the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights from Syria, in the town of Majdal Shams, Dec. 8, 2024. Matias Delacroix | AP

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47