An Israeli soldier during the deployment of Israeli forces on the Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, on Dec. 7, 2024. (Credit; Jalaa Marey/AFP)
Syria on Saturday denounced Israel’s ‘’repeated attacks’’ following a drone strike in the south of the country earlier in the day, days after an airstrike on a military base in the northwest. Meanwhile, an Israeli minister rejected U.S. criticism of the latest operation.
Syrian state television reported Saturday that one person was injured when an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle near the Golan Heights, most of which has been occupied by Israel since 1967 and was annexed by Israel, and published a photo of a damaged truck in the village of Beit Jinn.
The attack ‘’constitutes a blatant violation of Syria’s sovereignty as well as a clear breach of international law, and is part of Israel’s repeated attacks on Syrian territory,’’ the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Israeli army said its forces fired in southern Syria at a person ‘’who was preparing terrorist attacks in their final stages,’’ without identifying the individual or specifying whether they belonged to a particular group. The person’s activities ‘’constituted an immediate threat’’ to Israeli soldiers, it said.
’Full of inaccuracies’
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Saturday lashed out at U.S. special envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack over his criticism of an earlier Israeli attack in Syria that targeted the Abu Duhur base Tuesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implicitly acknowledged the strike and claimed that Turkey, an ally of the Damascus authorities, was seeking to establish a military presence there.
Israel ‘’provided intelligence information to the authorized parties in the United States’’ before the strike, and Barrack’s criticism was ‘’full of inaccuracies and positions that contradict the line of U.S. President Donald Trump,’’ Katz said on X.
Barrack condemned Tuesday’s bombing, accusing Israel of ‘’unnecessary escalation.’’
In an interview with influencer Mario Nawfal published Friday, he also suggested the strike might have been aimed at provoking a conflict with Turkey as part of an electoral maneuver by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces a difficult position ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 legislative elections.
Barrack also said the Golan Heights was ‘’occupied’’ by Israel, even though the United States is among the few countries to have recognized its annexation by Israel, during Trump’s first term in 2019.
Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Syria since the fall of President Bashar Assad in December 2024, when he was toppled by an Islamist coalition.
It has also deployed troops in the U.N.-observed buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, where it says it has established a ‘’security zone’’ that it intends to maintain.
On Wednesday, from the area where he visited troops, Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Eyal Zamir stressed that the army ‘’is watching developments on the Syrian front’’ and ‘’will not allow hostile forces to establish themselves’’ at Israel’s borders.
Last November, in Beit Jinn, Israeli forces killed 13 Syrians during an operation they said targeted an Islamist group. Six Israeli soldiers were also injured in the exchange of fire.
