Israeli raids and arrests in southern Syria push population to the brink

Qatana, Syria – In the living room of his home, Ahmed explains in a low voice how he was beaten and tortured in an Israeli prison after he was arrested at a checkpoint the Israeli military had set up on the street in his village in Syria.

“They stopped me, they asked for my name, asked where I’m from,” he says. “I gave my name and village. They said, ‘You need to come with us for five minutes, and we’ll bring you back.'”

He says he then spent more than one year detained in Israel. For 90 days, he was in handcuffs and describes being thrown to the cell floor, beaten with sticks while restrained with his hands behind his back.

“They tighten the cuffs by stamping on them with their feet, until the cuffs bite into the flesh of your wrists and also your buttocks. Sometimes they leave them tightened like this for one or two days until your hands are extremely swollen. Your hands go green, and you can’t feel them at all.”

After his release this month, dozens of people gathered outside his home to congratulate him on his return, and to seek any scrap of information about their own relatives who are still missing. Al Jazeera has ascertained that there are at least 51 Syrians still detained inside Israel. Many were held in the notorious Sde Teiman military prison, but have since been transferred to facilities run by the Israel Prison Service. Al Jazeera has confirmed Syrians have been moved to Ofer, al-Jalama (Kishon) and Megiddo. A small number have been released.

The impact is ongoing. Mahmoud – a pseudonym – had been home for nine days when Al Jazeera interviewed him. “Until now I feel unstable; I’m not normal. I feel crazy sometimes in the night. I go to look at my kids because I can’t believe I’m really home.”

Mahmoud pauses as his six-year-old son carries in a tray of wobbling tea glasses and sets it carefully on the carpeted floor. The glasses clink, and the window shakes. The children turn their heads towards the sound of artillery. Since early August, the Israeli military has fired shells into the fields most days, preventing farmers and shepherds from working, occasionally killing livestock and regularly terrifying the population. In September, the Sijil Center, a Syrian organisation that monitors Israeli activity, documented 280 Israeli violations of the 1974 agreement between the two countries, including incursions, raids and arrests, as well as artillery and machine-gun fire.

UN forces have patrolled a demilitarised zone between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria since the 1974 agreement, but Israel occupied more Syrian land in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024. The peacekeepers remain, but have limited capacity to restrain Israeli military activity, which continues to increase.

In one incident in late August, two Israeli tanks and five other armoured vehicles descended from one of their hilltop bases and blocked the only access road to United Nations Disengagement Observer Force base 37, near the village of Jubata al-Khashab. A man who works for the local council called the UN base, which houses a peacekeeping mission established in 1974 to maintain the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire, and asked if they needed assistance.

“I think they were offended,” he laughed. “And they told me ‘, No, stay where you are; don’t you or anybody else come down here. We’ll call for help from another base if we need it.'”

UNDOF confirmed to Al Jazeera that the movement of their personnel continues to be “restricted on occasion” by the Israeli military, and that Israel’s practice of setting up roadblocks and checkpoints is “preventing UNDOF from conducting its planned and mandated patrol activities”.

Residents sometimes seek help from peacekeepers when people are detained at checkpoints, but there is little they can do about the midnight raids.

Mahmoud was detained at 3:30am when Israeli troops surrounded his home, calling for him by name and brandishing a photo of him from social media. Nine days after his release, he crouches, kneeling and pressing his forehead to the ground with his hands behind his head.

“They make us sit like this for hours,” he says, noting that he ended up with infected wounds on his knees from the cell floor. He has scars on his wrists and ankles from being restrained.

“They cuff you so you can’t move and then release the dogs,” he says. “They have muzzles on, but they ran into us, like a body slam.” The metal muzzles, he explains, made the impact stronger and caused bleeding.

“I want to tell you about the ‘disco room’,” he says. “It’s a room full of speakers; they put detainees in there, and the music is very loud.” He described seeing Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners throwing up when they were allowed out.

Mahmoud was never charged, and says he does not know why he was released. He says that he was never granted access to a lawyer throughout his detention. The Red Cross has been denied access to detainees in Israeli detention since October 7, 2023, the date of the Hamas-led attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s subsequent genocidal war on Gaza.

“They make sure you understand the moment you enter that you are stripped of all your rights; they tell you this explicitly.”

Al Jazeera has contacted the Israeli military for comment, but has yet to receive a response. Israel says that its occupation of Syrian land and incursions deeper into Syria are necessary for security reasons, and to defend Syria’s Druze community, which it says is threatened by the authorities in Syria – a claim the Syrian government rejects.

Detained without charge

Ahmed was bewildered by this treatment. He told Al Jazeera that he was not even questioned until nearly five months into his detention. He was asked whether he, or anyone he knew, was a member of Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIL (ISIS) or a list of other armed groups which had little in common and fought on opposite sides during the war in Syria.

Mohammed Seyyed was detained in 2025. Israeli troops had conducted an incursion the previous day, wreaking destruction on his home and farm. He, his son, his brother and his nephew had gone to make repairs when they were detained and taken into Israel. He was brought to the interrogation room bound and blindfolded. When an Israeli officer freed his eyes, they showed him maps and photographs of his home and neighbourhood.

“Even the barber who cuts my hair, they knew his name, his address,” he said. “They were letting me know they knew everything about me. That any question they might ask, they already knew the answer and would know if I was lying.”

But when the questions came, they were general. The Israeli officers seemed to know everything about him, except what he was accused of. Mohammed told Al Jazeera that one of the officers admitted he had been detained based on false information, which he attributed to reports made by those in his community who inform for Israel.

The fallout of Israeli military activity is wide-ranging. Impromptu checkpoints mean many residents are afraid to leave their homes. Road closures have an impact long after the Israeli soldiers leave: students who need to travel for university consider relocating to Damascus to guarantee they can attend classes, and people with health conditions worry about being blocked from reaching care.

The Syrian government is in a difficult position; Israel has blocked its forces from operating in the south, and it doesn’t have the military strength to confront its neighbour even if the authorities wished to. Instead, they have been attempting to negotiate a security agreement, but talks have largely stalled since the outbreak of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Residents are losing patience and have begun to protest. In Qatana, local sheikhs gathered after Friday prayers.

“They tested our patience in Daraa,” said Sheikh Mamdouh Tahhan, referring to an incident in Abidin where locals confronted Israeli troops. “As a state we don’t have the ability to get into a war with Israel, but as people we are ready.”

The families of some of those detained feel abandoned by their government. They complain about the lack of legal or financial assistance, noting that with their breadwinners missing, they have run up debts worth hundreds of dollars at local grocery stores.

The families have created a WhatsApp group to exchange news and information, sometimes looking for signs in a sky that is heavy with the sound of Israeli warplanes flying low, and the persistent buzz of a surveillance drone. “From the morning I’ve been listening, and I’ve been hearing the drone,” one mother says. “I have a hunch that because the drone is up, maybe there will be a release today.”

For several weeks in a row, people were released on Wednesdays. It has become a day of pained anticipation. Hassan Ahmed’s son, then 16, was taken into Israel in April 2025. Israeli troops razed his 400 olive trees shortly after. He has become pivotal in organising protests and hunting for information along with the other parents – in October, Israeli forces raided his farm again, destroying solar panels. Sitting on his balcony, the late afternoon sun filtering through the leaves of a walnut tree, he plays voice notes from other parents that land every minute or so.

“Since this morning, any message that pings on the phone, any new notification I check, hoping somebody has been released,” another mother explains. “Our hearts are on fire. We’re waiting.”

“I’m full of grief,” Hassan says, putting the phone down. “I’ll never be able to describe the pain, it’s very tough. Even trying to describe it makes my heart tighten. I feel like my heart will stop. I feel I will explode.”