In Syria, following the toppling of dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israel continues to launch strikes on military installations and in support of minority Druze communities.
Along its border with Syria, Israel has established six outposts in the United Nations buffer zone created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. With the post-Assad military severely weakened, Israel now has at least two more bases or outposts inside Syria, and satellite imagery shows IDF brigades carving a 20-mile trench stretching halfway across the region as part of a border strategy Israel has dubbed “the New East.”
Katz has maintained that these actions are necessary to ensure southern Syria stays demilitarized, a main goal of the New East operation.
“What Israel now wants is to be on the front line and on the other side of the front line to have no military presence,” Ömer Özkizilcik, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, told NBC News.
Videos shared by Israeli state media also show IDF forces summiting Mt. Hermon, part of the mountain range that separates Syria and Lebanon.According to Özkizilcik, this base is “the only area that has any strategic importance” to the IDF as the highest spot on the eastern Mediterranean coast that clearly overlooks both southern Lebanon and Damascus.