An hour’s drive from Damascus, on a country road to the Syrian village of Hadar, we meet the Israeli army.
Two combat vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear are standing at an improvised checkpoint – a foreign power in a country celebrating its freedom. They waved at us.
It was evidence of Israel’s invasion of Syrian territory – a temporary takeover, he said, of the UN-controlled buffer zone established in a ceasefire agreement 50 years ago.
“Maybe they’ll leave, maybe they’ll stay, maybe they’ll make the area safe and then they’ll leave,” said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. “We want to hope, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
The head of the village, Jawdat al-Tawil, pointed to the territory of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967, clearly visible from the Hadar terraces.
Many residents still have relatives living here.
They now see Israeli forces moving regularly around their own village, parts of which jut into the demilitarized zone. On the slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the mountainside.
A week after the fall of President Assad’s regime, the sense of freedom here becomes fatalism.
Jawdat al-Taweel proudly told me how the village defended itself against formations during the Syrian civil war, and showed me portraits of dozens of men who died in the process.
“We don’t allow anyone to trespass on our land,” he said. “(But) Israel is a state – we cannot oppose it. We used to oppose individuals, but Israel is a superpower.”
