{"id":49944,"date":"2024-12-15T22:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-15T22:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/bbc-speaks-to-syrians-watching-israels-incursion\/"},"modified":"2024-12-15T22:15:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T22:15:00","slug":"bbc-speaks-to-syrians-watching-israels-incursion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=49944","title":{"rendered":"BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel\u2019s incursion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">An hour&#8217;s drive from Damascus, on a country road into the Syrian village of Hadar, we meet Israel&#8217;s army.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Two military vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear man an impromptu checkpoint \u2013 a foreign authority in a country celebrating its freedom. They waved us through.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was evidence of Israel&#8217;s incursion into Syrian territory \u2013 the temporary seizure, it said, of a UN-monitored buffer zone, set up in a ceasefire agreement 50 years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Maybe they&#8217;ll leave, maybe they&#8217;ll stay, maybe they&#8217;ll make the area safe then go away,&#8221; said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. &#8220;We want to hope, but we&#8217;ll have to wait and see.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The village chief, Jawdat al-Tawil, pointed to the Golan Heights territory Israel occupied in 1967, clearly visible from Hadar&#8217;s terraces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Many residents here have relatives still living there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Now, they see Israeli forces routinely moving around their own village, parts of which jut into the demilitarized zone. On a slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the hillside.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A week after President Assad&#8217;s regime fell, the sense of freedom here comes tinged with fatalism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jawdat al-Tawil told me proudly how the village had defended itself against militia groups during the Syrian civil war, and showed me portraits of the dozens of men who had died doing so.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We don&#8217;t allow anyone to transgress on our land,&#8221; he said. &#8220;[But] Israel is a state \u2013 we can&#8217;t stand against it. We used to stand up to individuals, but Israel is a super-power.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cgm9w2ym39go\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An hour&#8217;s drive from Damascus, on a country road into the Syrian village of Hadar, we&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1683,4376,1424,4374,4251,4375],"class_list":["post-49944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","tag-bbc","tag-incursion","tag-israels","tag-speaks","tag-syrians","tag-watching"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel\u2019s incursion - 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