The Israeli military said it aborted a planned overnight strike in southern Syria after identifying the targets as Israeli civilians rather than suspected intruders.
The individuals were Jewish Israelis who had crossed into Syria and were returning to Israel, according to the military.
The incident, first reported by Israel’s public broadcaster and confirmed to The Associated Press by the military, has drawn attention to a fringe illegal Israeli settler group whose members have repeatedly crossed into southern Syria in recent weeks in an effort to establish illegal Jewish settlements.
Israel’s military has occupied parts of southern Syria for more than a year, but civilian incursions have become more frequent only recently.
The groups, whose members number in the dozens, have attempted to cross into Syria every few days in recent weeks. The military has been tasked with stopping them.
While most Israelis regard them as a fringe movement, the broader settlement enterprise enjoys support from figures in the country’s far-right government.
‘Pioneers of Bashan’
The most prominent group behind the incursions is known as Pioneers of Bashan.
Formed early last year, the right-wing activist group seeks to establish illegal Jewish settlements in southern Syria. Its name refers to the biblical region of Bashan, which included parts of present-day southern Syria and northern Jordan.
The group has focused on the southwestern Syrian provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Sweida.
Part of the area, including the summit of Mount Hermon, lies within a so-called buffer zone Israel declared in December 2024 after the overthrow of former Syrian president Bashar al Assad.
Members of the group claim a historical right to the land and argue that Jewish settlements would strengthen Israel’s control of the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed — a move not recognised by most of the international community.
Some members also claim that illegal Israeli settlements would help protect Syria’s Druze minority following deadly violence last year involving Druze groups, Sunni Bedouin tribes and Syrian government forces.
Amos Azaria, one of the group’s so called leaders, said it aims to establish a “humanitarian corridor” linking Israel with the Druze-majority province of Sweida by depopulating adjacent Sunni-majority areas.
“The entire Daraa district … must be cleared of the enemies seeking our destruction and instead be filled with Jewish settlement,” said Azaria, a computer science professor at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank.
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Repeated border crossings
The group’s immediate goal is to establish a Jewish outpost in southern Syria near the occupied Golan Heights.
In settler terminology, an outpost is an unofficial settlement established in the hope it will later receive government approval. Many Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank began this way.
