On December 8, Israel launched a military campaign targeting sites across Syria and advancing into Quneitra under the pretext of searching for weapons and collaborators with the Lebanese group Hezbollah and Iran.

Israeli forces set up checkpoints, uprooted trees, and destroyed the village’s only military post, which was merely a small station housing a few officers.

Israeli forces have also fired stun grenades, tear gas and live bullets at demonstrators unhappy at their encroachment into Syria.

The most recent incident came on Wednesday when Israeli forces fired on a protest against their destruction of several structures in two Quneitra villages and injured three people.

Israel’s incursion comes after Syria’s longtime autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad, was toppled by a lightning opposition offensive earlier in December.

Days later, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s presence in Syria would be “temporary”, yet he later clarified that Israel would illegally remain on Syrian soil until a new security arrangement is reached with Syria’s new authority.

Quneitra sits in the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory that Israel invaded and occupied during the 1967 war.After Israel’s withdrawal in 1974 from most of the territory it had occupied – while illegally retaining some of the Golan Heights – and the declaration of a demilitarised zone under UN supervision, the area remained largely neglected.

Today, many inhabitants continue to face uncertainty despite expressing hope that the country will recover from the devastation of the conflict. But Israel’s expanding and seemingly indefinite occupation of Syrian territory is already crushing some people’s optimism. “There is fear, and a lack of water, electricity, and food [in Quneitra’s villages]. Schools are closed, unlike in other provinces.

Those who have chosen to stay fear Israel’s aggression, especially if they protest its ongoing assault on the country.Many Syrians, worry Israel will find a new pretext to confiscate more Syrian land in the name of “security”.