At 2 a.m. on June 12, the women and children of Beit Jinn were jolted awake by banging doors, explosions, and orders blaring from Israeli loudspeakers.
It was clear who the soldiers wanted. Loudspeakers barked the full names and nicknames of seven men from this village that lies on Syrian soil in the shadow of an Israeli observation post on Mount Hermon.
“I heard the sound of shooting and came out,” recounts 12-year-old Shahed, daughter of Ali Hammadi, one of the seven named, who had recently returned from an agricultural job in Lebanon. “I saw my cousin had been shot. I was scared. They told my father to come out.”
Why We Wrote This
The ouster last year of President Bashar al-Assad raised hopes of a diplomatic reset with Israel, whom many on Syria’s Golan Heights see as a pragmatic neighbor. Instead, they’ve faced mysterious Israeli detentions and expanded occupation.
Israel calls such arrests operational necessities. But to Syrian villagers and international law experts, they are abductions on foreign soil, and a stark illustration of the challenges the new government in Damascus faces as it tries to recalibrate relations with Syria’s longtime adversary next door.
The Israeli raid in the foothills of the Golan Heights, south of Damascus, seemed well planned. The soldiers had apparently anticipated resistance along the area’s winding smuggling routes and ridgelines, which are strewn with the ruins of old Syrian army bases destroyed by Israel.
Khalida Dable, Mr. Hammadi’s wife, recalls the night vividly. Soldiers handcuffed her husband and fired flash-bangs, shouting for his nephew, Mohammed Hammadi, also on the list, to come out from next door.
Israelis had surrounded the house. “They were above and below,” she says. “Maybe two or three hundred in all. They took both in handcuffs and then left. We know nothing since.”
The raids stood out in scale and reach. In the span of an hour, Israeli forces stormed seven homes located on the Syrian side of a U.N.-monitored buffer zone dating from two previous Israel-Syria wars that raged in 1973 and 1967, when Israel captured the Golan. The IDF says it was targeting Hamas operatives and that its soldiers had recovered weapons.
Regardless of who the men were or the grounds on which they were seized, Israel’s actions violated international law, says Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, a human rights and counterterrorism expert. “This is a clear breach of sovereignty and, under international law, amounts to kidnapping,” she says.
Few see Israel as an enemy
That the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has detailed intelligence on Beit Jinn is unsurprising. During the Syrian civil war, Israel backed local rebels, and the village lies within sight of Israeli and U.N. observation posts.
Local residents say they don’t understand why the soldiers targeted the seven men. Many here view Israel as a pragmatic neighbor, remembering that during the civil war against the autocratic leader Bashar al-Assad, Israeli hospitals treated injured rebels, even those belonging to Al Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra.
That goodwill endures. Few criticize Israel, while surveillance is accepted as a fact of life.
“When they entered our house, it was a massive, terrifying shock,” says Kawther Abdullah, sister of Maamoun Abdullah, another of the seven detained that night. “We would never expect them to come into our homes because we are not against them. We are against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar al-Assad, first and foremost. Why would we be against Israel? They helped us and treated our wounded.”
The ouster last year of Mr. Assad, an ally of Iran who received crucial military support from Lebanese Hezbollah forces, raised hopes of a diplomatic reset between Israel and Syria. But since the regime change in Damascus, Israel has continued to pound Syrian targets, including in the capital.
The government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa – once designated by Washington as a terrorist but welcomed this week to the Trump White House – says it has no appetite for war with Israel and has taken part in Washington-brokered talks seeking a security arrangement.
The government’s desire to reach a deal with Israel means that the plight of villages such as Beit Jinn is being ignored, say relatives of the men detained in June.
The Beit Jinn incident is one of many that local leader Mohammed Mazen Mraywid says he has raised with Israeli officers. As mukhtar of Joubata al-Khashab, a Golan Heights village in Syria’s Quneitra governorate, he is the man villagers call when relatives are taken, and the man whom the Israelis use to pass messages.
He recalls a mid-July meeting at his two-story home, attended by an Arabic-speaking Israeli intelligence officer who introduced himself as Abu Ibrahim, members of the Syrian security forces, and a United Nations peacekeeper.
The Israelis arrived with maps and escorts. They said they were searching for weapons and suspects linked to Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran, and Palestinian groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas. “These are the accusations,” Mr. Mraywid says.
Efforts to reassure Israel of its security fell on deaf ears, he says with frustration. “I told them ‘we guarantee no violations by residents and no action against your army.’ They said: ‘After Oct. 7 in Gaza, we trust no one.’”
The fall of the Assad regime changed local dynamics, Mr. Mraywid says. Since December 2024, the IDF has built new military posts, fenced by barbed wire, on the Syrian side of the buffer zone. IDF soldiers uprooted trees to construct one of them.
“Whoever takes my land, prevents me from entering and cultivating it, and sets up military posts is an occupier,” insists the mukhtar.
Monitoring violations
The Israeli army currently maintains 10 positions on the Syrian side of the buffer, says Major Donnacha Reilly, a member of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has monitored the ceasefire area between Israeli and Syrian forces for the past 50 years.
UNDOF has reported Israel’s expanded presence to the U.N. Security Council, protesting Israel’s construction of obstacles along the ceasefire line and IDF restrictions on U.N. patrol movements. Both are breaches of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement, UNDOF complains.
Residents of Quneitra and southern Damascus say arrests began as isolated incidents in fields and orchards, then escalated into night raids with dogs, drones, and convoys of vehicles. Israeli forces also set up temporary checkpoints that led to further arrests.
UNDOF tracks local residents’ complaints but has no tally of how many Syrians have been detained.
“Some of the civilians were released following interrogation by the Israel Defense Forces while others remain in detention in Israel,” Major Reilly says.
Palestinian human rights lawyer Khaled Quzmar says families of 13 Syrians detained this year have sought his help. Syrian counts suggest 40 people have been disappeared, seven from southern Damascus and the rest from Quneitra. There are similar cases in Daraa, a smuggling hub and launchpad for the 2011 Syrian uprising.
The Israeli human rights group HaMoked, which tracks Palestinian detainees, says it received 26 tracing requests from Syria in 2025. Seven people are confirmed held in Ofer Prison in the West Bank and two in a nearby military camp. But the International Committee of the Red Cross, which normally conducts prison visits, has been denied access to Israeli detention sites since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“The ICRC must be notified of and granted access to Syrian detainees in Israeli custody,” says spokesperson Suhair Zakkout.
The IDF says that its operations in southern Syria are driven by the “operational necessity to thwart terrorist activities, infrastructure, and stockpiles of arms.” It acknowledges establishing mobile posts “in the security area” to prevent smuggling and attacks.
Responding to questions about the seven men detained in June, an IDF spokesman cited an operation to “apprehend Hamas terrorists operating in the Beit Jinn area of Syria” and said they had been transferred to Israel for interrogation.
Their relatives deny the men have anything to do with Hamas. They have received no notice of their status or condition.
