On Monday, I traveled to Syria for the third time, this time acquiring a deeper understanding of the operations being carried out there by the IDF’s 595th battalion of Combat Intelligence Unit
My first time was to Tel Kudne, wrapped in a winter coat at one of the middle positions of Israel’s nine covering the buffer zone it took over in Syria in December 2024, when the Bashar al-Assad regime fell.
The second time I went to Syria was to the northernmost point in the buffer zone, the top of the Syrian Hermon, covered in snow.
This time, I traveled to the southernmost point of the zone, sweating in the rough summer heat at Position 720, which is set at the trilateral crossroads of Syria, Jordan, and Israel.
What has changed and what has not?
IN DECEMBER 2024, the IDF was euphoric about having seized the Syrian buffer zone, but did not necessarily expect to stay there long.
At Tel Kudne, then-IDF Chief Spokesman Daniel Hagari told me, “We are here in an abandoned Syrian base in the buffer zone. The only reason we are here is to prevent terror [from] entering into the buffer zone.”
“A couple of days ago, [regarding] one of the UN bases of UNDOF here, we prevented a terror attack on a UNDOF base,” Hagari continued.
Further, he told me, “The IDF is now controlling several points in this buffer zone to make sure that the Israeli border on that side [gesturing with his hand] is safe. This is the only reason we are here.”
“There have been rumors yesterday that our tanks are heading to Damascus. This is fake. We are only in the buffer zone, making sure that the Israeli border is safe and we will keep on doing this [in] this time,” he added.
Hagari was very concerned to assure Syria and the world that Israel had limited ambitions in Syria, and if matters there became stable soon, he seemed to leave open an IDF withdrawal not very long after.
He was especially emphatic that Israel had no ambitions to pressure Damascus.
Then some surprising things happened.
Most of the world did not object to Israel’s presence in Syria. Certainly, neither the Biden administration nor the Trump administration did.
Even the new Syrian regime did not make too much noise about it at the start.
It seemed that the move was mostly to prevent jihadist Syrians from using the chaos of the fall of the Assad regime to imminently invade Israel.
But if no such invasion was threatened, Israel might be able to withdraw not that long after.
BY MARCH, when I visited the Syrian Hermon, Defense Minister Israel Katz was talking about Israel remaining in the Syrian buffer zone indefinitely, and very likely for multiple years.
This was a major widening of the length and purpose of the mission in Syria.
New regime allows a massacre of Syrian Alawites, Druze
Only days before the visit to the Hermon, the new regime had ordered or allowed a massacre of Syrian Alawites. A similar massacre was repeated in April, and in July, the regime directed or facilitated an entirely separate massacre of Syrian Druze.
The bottom line is that Israel either took advantage of the Syrian regime’s misstep in failing to stop a massacre of its citizens in its territory or read the occurrence of the massacre as exposing the regime’s true continued jihadist colors.
Accordingly, Israel projected that it would remain in the Syrian buffer zone for a longer period of time to put the new Syrian regime in its place if it had any thoughts that it could try to do to Israel what it was perpetrating against its own citizens.
In July, the Israel Air Force even struck the Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus to emphasize its power and to influence the regime to cut short the massacre of the Syrian Druze.
But these were still new messages for Israel to be presenting, and the messages felt somewhat brazen or at least risky and audacious.
DURING MY visit to Position 720 on Monday, none of those earlier feelings were present.
The feeling was that the IDF is utterly dominant in the Syrian buffer zone and beyond.
IDF Battalion 595 Commander Lt. Col. “G,” his Operations Officer Maj. “M,” and intelligence collection soldiers “S”, “D,” and “V,” – all of them other than G being female soldiers – expressed emphatic confidence in their ability to gather intelligence in the area.
S, D, and V make up a specialist drone field intelligence collection group.
They have helped locate and catch, in the buffer zone, Iranians, Hamas terrorists, jihadists, and just about anyone who could present a threat to Israel – and even somewhat beyond the buffer zone.
They are part of a new generation of IDF combat women who do not hesitate to take down the enemy in hostile territory, nor do they hesitate to speak up on the Israeli side of the border if the traditionally male-dominated combat forces do not initially listen sufficiently to aspects of their intelligence findings.
They seem to be exactly the type of professional and confident field intelligence officers that Israel needs in the post-October 7, world where being aggressive and forward-leaning into enemy areas caps off the new strategy.
Likewise, G and M seem to have a strong handle on all nine of the positions that they are responsible for in Syria.
Both regularly enter enemy territory with their troops, sometimes managing sensitive operations from ad-hoc temporary command positions set up close to an Iranian or jihadist target that they may be about to nab.
G knows how to wait until the exact right moment in the middle of the night to strike, such that the target terrorists will be sleeping, and any nearby villagers will not be a problem.
M knows how to manage her large number of field intelligence collection units in order to confirm, reject, or deepen intelligence already received from IDF intelligence headquarters or the IAF in order to decide whether to undertake an operation and how best to carry it out.
In recent months, the Trump administration and the Israeli government have started to make initial noises about some kind of security deal between the sides that could lead to greater demilitarization on the Syrian side, in exchange for a limited IDF withdrawal from the buffer zone in Syria.
G will say all of the right things about deferring to the political echelon on questions such as how he would continue to defend the Israeli-Syrian-Jordanian borders if the government asked him to withdraw from some of his nine positions.
But there is a rock-solid confidence about him that says neither he nor his intelligence collection units, a mix of male and male-female units, will be leaving Syria anytime in the foreseeable future.
And at this point, that rock-solid confidence feels like a simple fact of IDF operations, rather than requiring any abrasiveness or audacity.