Israeli forces pushed into the southern Syrian province of Quneitra on Wednesday, setting up a checkpoint in the village of Al-Muallaqa, searching passersby and briefly detaining one man before pulling back, Syria's state news agency SANA reported. The man was released hours later. SANA said Israeli units had also entered two other villages, in Quneitra and neighboring Daraa, the day before. There was no comment from the Israeli military, which has kept up ground incursions and airstrikes across southern Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
The pattern dates to the moment the old government collapsed. After Assad fell in December 2024, the Israeli state declared the 1974 disengagement agreement void and moved its forces into the UN-monitored buffer zone that had separated the two armies for half a century. Damascus's new administration has repeatedly said it holds to that agreement and poses no threat to its neighbor. The incursions have continued regardless, into territory Israel now occupies beyond the line it held before.
The pressure from Washington is new. Axios reported that Trump, in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urged him to withdraw Israeli troops from both Syria and Lebanon, telling him, according to US and Israeli officials, "They don't want you there. You should redeploy." Israeli outlets, among them The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post, carried the same account. Netanyahu argued that Israel needs security zones along its borders, and by those reports is unlikely to order any real pullback. The call came days after Trump met Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Türkiye, as his administration tries to broker a security understanding between Damascus and Israel. Neither the White House nor Netanyahu's office has confirmed the exchange on the record.
The same squeeze is playing out one border west. A sixth round of US-sponsored talks between Lebanon and Israel resumed in Rome this week, after earlier rounds produced a framework for a phased Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese land. A US State Department spokesperson called the latest session "productive." On the ground, the picture was less tidy: Israeli forces set off blasts in southern Lebanese border towns and flew drones over Beirut on Wednesday, according to Lebanon's National News Agency, which puts the toll from Israeli attacks since March 2 at more than 4,300 killed. For all the diplomacy, the maps have not moved, and the troops Trump reportedly wants gone are still there.