Enab Baladi – Omar Alaa Eldin
Clashes between young men from the town of Beit Jinn (a town in the southwestern countryside of Damascus, near the occupied Syrian Golan Heights) and Israeli forces at dawn on Friday, 28 November, reignited developments in southern Syria. Israel had continued its incursions with little resistance other than previous confrontations with residents of the towns of Nawa and Koya in the Daraa countryside.
Israeli forces responded to the local resistance with heavy artillery strikes, killing 13 people and injuring 24 others, while six Israeli officers suffered serious, moderate, and minor wounds. The shelling also destroyed several homes and triggered displacement from Beit Jinn to nearby areas.
This escalation followed a series of Israeli measures, beginning with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the southern buffer zone, and continuing with Defense Minister Israel Katz’s statements about the presence of forces, including Yemen’s Houthi group, which Syria’s ambassador to the UN, Ibrahim Olabi, dismissed as “a fantasy.”
This report examines the impact of the escalation on the Syria-Israel negotiations and the expected Syrian response amid ongoing Israeli violations since the fall of the Assad government.
Condemnations: A full-fledged war crime
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned what it described as a “criminal assault” by an Israeli patrol that infiltrated Beit Jinn and targeted civilians and their property.
According to the ministry, after the patrol failed in its incursion, Israeli forces launched “brutal and deliberate shelling that constitutes a full-fledged war crime,” committing a “horrific massacre” that killed more than ten civilians, including women and children. The continued “barbaric and deliberate” shelling caused significant displacement from the town.
Several states and organizations condemned the Israeli attacks on Beit Jinn, including Britain, Turkey, Kuwait, the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the United Nations, Qatar, Jordan, the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
Israel justified its attack by claiming it was arresting members of the Islamic Group (a Lebanese movement). According to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, the group possessed weapons in Beit Jinn, worked on “recruiting terrorists and marking their positions,” and played a central role as an independent force in the northern front during the war with Lebanon.
The Islamic Group denied any connection to the events and rejected the use of its name in any operation outside Lebanon.
Impact on the agreement with Syria
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted unnamed security officials describing the Beit Jinn incident as “dangerous,” arguing that Israel should not allow what they called “hostile elements” to establish themselves near its borders.
The officials said the incident shows “there can be no agreement at the moment because Syria is an unstable state.”
They added that the most important takeaway from Beit Jinn is that “as a country, we must not withdraw from the territories we have taken, especially Mount Hermon.”
On 27 November, Defense Minister Katz used the same argument about the presence of fighters along the border to rule out reaching an agreement with Syria.
In a closed session of the Israeli Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Katz said Israel was “not on the right path” toward peace with Syria, citing forces inside Syrian territory considering a ground “invasion” of population centers in the Golan Heights, according to Kan.
Syrian researcher Samir Alabdullah believes Israel is currently trying to impose a “fait accompli” on Syrians, solidifying its presence in areas it entered after the fall of the Assad government, while raising the ceiling of its demands in ongoing negotiations to secure maximum gains.
He told Enab Baladi that Israel’s domestic political calculations are central to this approach. Prime Minister Netanyahu, he said, is trying to push forward and keep southern Syria and southern Lebanon open to Israeli interventions, exploiting Syria’s current vulnerability and the international climate that favors Israel after the 7 October 2023 Al Aqsa Flood operation.
Netanyahu seeks to appear as a “hero” domestically and distance himself from accountability and trial, the researcher added.
Although negotiations remain stalled, these incursions will affect them, whether by pushing the Syrian position toward greater rigidity or by prompting potential US pressure on Israel out of fear of regional escalation.
Israel, he said, will seek to use its military advantage to impose its terms on the negotiating table.
Security researcher Moataz al-Sayyid, from the Syrian Center for Security and Defense Studies, agreed. He said the escalation increases Israel’s pressure at the United Nations, where attacks on civilians are viewed as war crimes, and further complicates the negotiation process by reinforcing Israel’s image as a party imposing its will by force while violating established rules of engagement.
Syria’s Ambassador to the UN, Ibrahim Olabi, said in an interview with the Saudi channel Al Hadath on 28 November that Syria was negotiating with Israel “from a position of strength, not weakness,” relying on diplomatic pressure and what he called military restraint to confront Israel with diplomatic isolation.
How will Syria respond
When asked about Syria’s response to Israel’s actions, Ambassador Olabi said, “At the Syrian Foreign Ministry, we use all international and diplomatic means to pressure Israel so that it feels isolated and returns to the negotiating table. Its allies must also pressure it.”
According to researcher Moataz al-Sayyid, a large-scale confrontation between Syria and Israel is unlikely, if not impossible, under current conditions.
He believes Israel still assumes the region does not host an organized resistance, which is why it operates with confidence and without facing retaliation.
However, repeated incursions and arrest attempts could spark more local confrontations as defensive reactions, something Israel does not want, he said. Israel seeks to prevent these clashes from becoming a regular pattern.
The researcher added that continued civilian deaths could force a shift in Israel’s incursion strategy, as recurring local resistance may create a new, even if unorganized, environment of defiance, increasing Israel’s operational risk and the potential spread of escalation to other towns.
Researcher Samir Alabdullah expects the Syrian government to face growing public pressure to respond to these Israeli violations. This pressure could evolve into popular initiatives that go beyond the government’s current posture, including attempts to organize local preparedness for confronting attacks.
The risk in this scenario, he said, is that Israel may use such local mobilization as a pretext to continue its operations under the claim of confronting “armed men” threatening its security.
Therefore, Alabdullah argues that the Syrian government must coordinate official and popular positions to avoid giving Israel additional justification to continue its attacks, while focusing on diplomatic and political channels and leveraging the negotiation track to press for an end to these violations.
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