Within hours of Bashar al-Assad's fall in December 2024, Israeli troops crossed the ceasefire line that had held on the Golan since 1974, and the Israeli air force destroyed most of what remained of Syria's military in several hundred strikes. Israel has since kept soldiers on the Syrian side of Mount Hermon and in the province of Quneitra, demands that southern Syria stay free of Syrian troops, and bombs when it judges a threat is forming. Syria's new government has not fired back, and asks for a security agreement.
The wider conflict and each side's full account: Syria after Assad.
Where it stands · September 2026
Israeli forces shelled the Quneitra countryside in southern Syria on 6 September and again on 20 September, when they also blew up former military sites in southwestern Syria. On 9 September Israel's prime minister visited Mount Hermon on the Syrian side and said Israel would not allow any terrorist army to establish itself on the border. On 11 September more than forty states backed Syria at the United Nations as it protested the Israeli presence on Mount Hermon.
What the dispute is about
The line. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later applied its law there, a step the Security Council declared void and only the United States has recognised. A demilitarised strip patrolled by the United Nations separated the armies from 1974. Israel now holds that strip and more, and says the agreement lapsed with the government that signed it.
What Israel may prevent. Israel claims the right to keep any force it distrusts out of range: Syrian units in the south, Turkish aircraft and radars anywhere. Syria and nearly every other state call that a claim to decide what a neighbour may do on its own soil.
Whether there will be an agreement. The two governments have talked, through the Americans and directly. Syria asks for withdrawal to the 1974 line. Israel asks for a demilitarised south and keeps what it took.
