On a clear day, Israeli soldiers on the Golan Heights can see Damascus with the naked eye, underlining the strategic advantage Israel has held for almost six decades since it occupied the plateau.
Now Israel is seeking to add a layer of protection to the occupied area by building a military line known as Sufa 53, a few kilometres inside Syria in Quneitra and Deraa governorates.
It is one of three new occupation lines created by Israel in the three years since the start of the Gaza war, comprising roads, barriers, trenches and other fortifications and infrastructure.
Israel built the first, called the Yellow Line, in Gaza in October last year after a ceasefire that on paper ended two years of war with Hamas. It has set up another Yellow Line in south Lebanon, the main theatre of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war that began in March. Israel says the line is needed to guard against attacks by the Iran-backed group.
The Sufa 53 line runs near populated Syrian areas where Israel has increasingly been staging incursions to apprehend people deemed a threat or to search for weapons caches.
The line is named after the designation of an Israeli battalion known as Sufa (storm), which played a key role in foiling Syrian attacks to regain the Golan Heights in the 1973 war, which was launched by Syria and Egypt. The Golan also overlooks southern Lebanon, northern Jordan, and the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main water reservoir.
According to a local official, who said his farmland and that of others in the village are now inaccessible, the line begins near the town of Hader in northern Quneitra and extended for about 20km as far as the village of Hamddieh by last winter. The Israeli military started work in recent weeks to extend the line to Asheh further south, he said.
“The situation keeps getting worse," he explained, adding that Israeli arrests and raids have become routine.
In Hamadieh, residents who venture into restricted areas risk being shot at by Israeli forces, including the killing of one person this week and the shooting of a man with a disability. Israeli media reported that Israeli forces killed a 22-year-old Palestinian man suspected of trying to infiltrate an Israeli army position in the area.
Military logic
Syria's policy towards Israel has changed sharply since the December 2024 ouster of its former president Bashar Al Assad. His removal by militant forces led by current President Ahmad Al Shara deprived Russia and Iran of a key ally and helped to restore the US position in the region.
Mr Al Shara, a former Al Qaeda operative turned US ally, has abandoned the anti-Israeli rhetoric of his predecessor and of his former comrades. His top lieutenants have taken part in US-supervised talks on security arrangements with Israel as a precursor to a peace deal. The last of these meetings was held in August in the Jordanian capital Amman. A main figure behind them is Tom Barrack, US Special Presidential Envoy for Syria.
On Thursday in Istanbul, Mr Barrack discussed "shared priorities in addressing regional threats" with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani. He praised Syria as "assisting the region in finding an algorithm to lower the temperatures in its neighbourhood".
Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Jerusalem, told The National that the more permanent the infrastructure appears, the harder it becomes for Mr Al Shara to sell continued engagement domestically.
The military logic of Sufa 53 is "easier to understand than its political meaning”, said Ms Valensi, who heads the Syria Research Field at INSS. She pointed out that after the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, Israeli military doctrine has emphasised "forward defence, greater depth, better observation, obstacles to infiltration and the ability to detect and disrupt threats before they reach Israeli communities".
Under this logic, "roads, berms and fortified positions have clear tactical value", she said. "The problem is that tactical infrastructure can acquire strategic and political meaning". However, Israel has not formally declared Sufa 53 "to be a new political border" and it has not been adopted as “the formal name of an overarching territorial project”.
Speaking in New York during the UN General Assembly last month, Mr Al Shara said Israel should withdraw to the positions it held in the Golan before the downfall of Mr Al Assad, or to what is known as the 1974 armistice line. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated the armistice with then president Hafez Al Assad as Israeli forces reversed initial losses in the 1973 war and advanced to within 40km of Damascus.
The “discussions for security arrangements” should follow an Israeli withdrawal to the 1974 line, Mr Al Shara said at an event organised by Atlantic Council. If these arrangements succeed, Syria would “enter in discussions about lasting peace”, he added.
Israel withdrew from a deal after "we almost reached 90 per cent of agreement,” Mr Al Shara explained, without elaborating.
More flexible
The Golan has been so important for Israel that it annexed the area in 1981, in a move the UN Security Council declared “null” and “without international legal effect”. In contrast, Israel has not officially annexed the occupied West Bank, despite the pressure from settlers and other extremists in the country.
Syria and Israel had come very close to signing a deal in 2000, after years of US mediation. A few metres stood in the way. Hafez Al Assad turned it down because the proposed agreement did not give Syria sovereignty over a part of the north-eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. He regarded that part as Syrian territory, while Israel said the whole shore was Israeli.
Under Bashar Al Assad, Syria became beholden to Iran, particularly in the last years of his rule, when the Golan became part of Tehran's "ring of fire" of states and groups with capabilities to attack Israel. Work on Sufa 53 began during the Syrian civil war in 2022, four years after anti-Assad rebels withdrew from southern Syria under a surrender deal and were replaced by pro-Iranian groups.
Under Mr Al Shara, security forces have been combing areas near the 1974 line in Quneitra and Deraa provinces for remnants of groups that were associated with Iran and Hezbollah and confiscating weapons.
The Syrian President is also widely seen as more flexible when it comes to a peace deal that could transform the Middle East and bring in huge Western investment, although it could put him at ideological odds with some of his supporters.
"He is not in a strong position to turn down anything requested by his allies, unless he can play them against each other," a diplomat who works on Syria said.
However, Sufa 53 is a political slap in the face for a leader who has made co-operation with the US a core of Syrian foreign policy, even after President Donald Trump boasted in December about the decree he issued in 2019 that recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.
Ms Valensi described Israel's policy towards Syria as half-engagement and half-confrontation. It negotiates and co-ordinates on security while "maintaining military positions, incursions and defensive infrastructure".
Under this logic, "you do not surrender leverage before an agreement", especially since Israel "does not yet trust Damascus to control all armed actors in the south", with October 7 having "dramatically reduced Israel’s appetite for taking security risks" based on intentions.
"From Al Shara’s perspective, this creates a serious political problem," she said.
