Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said that Israel would escalate its level of attacks on Syrian regime forces if they do not soon withdraw from the Druze city of Sweida in southern Syria.
Israel has attacked regime forces both on Sunday and on Monday to try to convince them to leave the area, but so far, the regime forces have remained.
The picture of exactly what is going on in Sweida is shrouded in a fog of accusations and counteraccusations between clashing Syrian groups.
As of Wednesday morning, clashes between Syrian government troops and local Druze fighters resumed just hours after a ceasefire was announced.
Local news outlet Sweida24 said the city and nearby villages were coming under heavy artillery and mortar fire early on Wednesday, while Syria's defence ministry, in a statement carried by state news agency SANA, blamed outlaw groups in Sweida for breaching the truce.
The fighting started based on a small scale dispute between Druze-Syrian and Bedouin-Syrian tribes, but eventually erupted into much larger clashes between those tribes, leading to between 30-100 deaths.
The regime has intervened, but is allegedly on the Bedouin side of the conflict
This led Syrian regime forces to intervene, which they said was merely intended to restore order.
However, unconfirmed reports have alleged that the Syrian regime is firmly on the Bedouins' side and has committed atrocities against the Druze.
Israel is saying that it is intervening to protect the Druze, due to decades of supportive relations between Israelis and Druze, including many Druze-Israelis serving in the IDF, as well as to keep Syrian regime forces out of a buffer zone which Israel declared in southern Syria in December 2024 after the fall of the Syrian Assad regime.
Reuters contributed to this report.