Israeli forces operate at a location given as Mount Hermon region, Syria, in this handout image released on Monday (December 9, 2024).
| Photo Credit: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via Reuters

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has ordered Israeli troops to prepare to stay over the winter on Mount Hermon, a strategic location overlooking Damascus, adding to signs that Israel’s presence in Syria is set to continue for a prolonged period.

“Due to what is happening in Syria — there is enormous security importance to our holding on to the peak of Mount Hermon,” a statement from Mr. Katz’s office said on Friday (December 13, 2024).

The order suggests that Israeli troops who moved into a buffer zone inside Syrian territory as well as a “few additional points” following the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s government are likely to remain.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday (December 12, 2024) that the troops would remain until there was an effective force in place to enforce the Separation of Forces Agreement signed following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel has called the move a limited and temporary measure to ensure the security of its borders but it is unclear when it will judge the situation in Syria stable enough to pull its forces back.

Mr. Katz said the severe winter weather on Mount Hermon, a peak of 2,800 metres (9,186 feet) that straddles the border between Syria and Lebanon, made special preparations for a prolonged stay by Israeli troops a necessity.

A number of countries, including France and the United Arab Emirates, have condemned Israel’s incursion, calling it a breach of the agreement that followed the Arab-Israeli war. But the United States has offered its support, saying the move was necessary for Israel’s self-defence.

As well as moving troops into the buffer zone, Israel has also destroyed the bulk of the Syrian military’s arsenal of weapons and ammunition in hundreds of air and naval strikes this week, a move it said was aimed at preventing the equipment falling into the hand of hostile forces.

While Israel welcomed the removal of Assad, an ally of its arch enemy Iran, it remains suspicious of the rebel groups that toppled him, many of which have origins linked to Islamist groups including Al Qaeda.

Beirut, Lebanon:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said on Sunday it launched its “largest” air operation, sending explosive drones at a mountaintop Israeli military intelligence base in the annexed Golan Heights.

It is the latest incident among escalating cross-border exchanges of fire that have triggered global alarm.

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Hamas ally, has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Announcing “the largest operation” carried out by its aerial forces, Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters sent “multiple, successive squadrons of drones to target the reconnaissance centre” on Mount Hermon.

The Israeli military said an explosive drone “fell in an open area in the Mount Hermon area” but there were “no injuries”.

Attacks as well as rhetoric have escalated in recent weeks, spurring fears of an all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah which last went to war in 2006.

The Lebanese movement said the drone attack was part of its “response” to the killing of an operative in a strike Saturday deep into east Lebanon around 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the border.

The Mount Hermon attack targeted intelligence systems, “destroying them and starting a major fire”, Hezbollah said.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant visited troops on Mount Hermon earlier on Sunday, his office said.

In two additional statements, the military said its air defences “successfully intercepted” several “aerial targets” that crossed from Lebanon after sirens sounded in the Golan Heights area.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it in a move largely unrecognised by the international community.

The Israeli strike on Saturday killed “a key operative in Hezbollah’s Aerial Defence Unit”, the military has said.

Throughout Sunday, Hezbollah announced four more attacks on Israeli military sites across the border with barrages of rockets as well as some guided missiles. Israeli authorities reported four wounded.

Gallant, in a video from Mount Hermon, said that “even if there is a ceasefire” in Gaza, “we will continue fighting and doing everything necessary to bring about the desired result” in the campaign against Hezbollah.

The cross-border violence has killed at least 497 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to the authorities.

Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced from the border areas in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)