Israeli military forces carried out at least 1,672 violations inside Syrian territory between August 2025 and May 2026, according to a report by a Syrian research and monitoring organisation.
Data shared with Middle East Eye by the Sijil Centre revealed that Israeli violations in Syria escalated sharply following the latest US-Israel war on Iran.
March 2026 marked an unprecedented escalation, with Israeli forces carrying out more than 321 military operations, including 121 aerial actions, and detaining 41 civilians, representing the highest monthly totals to date.
On 8 December 2024, hours after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's government, Israeli forces launched a large-scale ground operation into Syria aimed at capturing the buffer zone between the two countries.
Israeli forces pushed across the 1974 ceasefire line in the occupied Golan Heights, advancing into military positions in southern Syria, marking the first major ground breach since the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
Israel seized control of the UN-monitored buffer zone and occupied large parts of the demilitarised zone, which extends over 75 kilometres in length and ranges in width from 10 kilometres in the centre to 200 metres in the far south, advancing deeper into parts of western Daraa and Quneitra provinces.
In the first 48 hours of Assad's fall, 350 square kilometres of territory had already been captured, extending from Mount Hermon in the north to a strip of Daraa’s Yarmouk Basin in the south. At the same time, Israeli fighter jets launched at least 350 air strikes across multiple Syrian provinces, targeting dozens of military aircraft, air defence systems, and weapons depots.
In an interview with Middle East Eye, Hamza Ghadban, head of the Sijil Centre, said Israel has since built nine military bases and is believed to be building a 10th.
Since the government's collapse, the international community has largely looked away as Israel has carried out an unprecedented campaign of military expansion into southern Syria.
In March and April 2025, Israel conducted two ground operations deep into southern Syria.
The first targeted Koya village in the Yarmouk Basin of western Daraa; the second, pushed into Nawa, a town in the Daraa countryside that had been a flashpoint during the Syrian war.
Clashes erupted between Israeli forces and Syrian fighters following both incursions, resulting in casualties.
Ghadban said the Israeli army gradually shifted away from large-scale ground operations toward a "silent strangulation": a sustained series of raids, incursions, and the establishment of military checkpoints.
The zone of operations, Ghadban said, has remained consistent: a triangular area extending approximately 15 kilometres from the 1974 demilitarisation line into Syrian territory.
"It spans from Mount Hermon in the north to the Yarmouk Basin in the south and 15 kilometres into the depths of Syria," Ghadban said. "You kind of have this triangle that is the hotspot for Israeli activities in Syria."
February 2026 saw a noticeable escalation in "serious operations", characterised by killings, detentions, house raids and shellings.
A significant increase was recorded in targeted house raids, focusing on specific homes and individuals, with residents often gathered at checkpoints, subjected to verbal insults, and, at times, physical brutality.
Sijil’s field researchers have documented a detailed operational geography that reveals the strategy underpinning Israel’s presence in southern Syria.
The internal document seen by MEE said that "more than 80 percent of all documented violations are heavily concentrated in the Quneitra governorate, making it the primary operational theatre, followed by Daraa and Rif Dimashq (Damascus countryside)."
"Within Quneitra, the rate of incursions is significantly higher in the northern and central countryside compared to the south, largely due to topographical factors and population density," the data analysis added.
