'Post' visits Syria in first Israeli media visit since 1974

The Jerusalem Post, on Wednesday, participated in a dramatic visit to an abandoned Syrian base at Tel Kudne in southern Syria, embedded with the IDF, as part of the first Israeli media visit to that country since the 1973-4 Yom Kippur War and armistice.

To the Post’s best knowledge, the last time an affiliated reporter visited Syria, was Abraham Rabinowitz, who visited multiple times between the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1974 armistice.

Standing on the top of Tel Kudne, which was the site of an intense battle during the 1973 War, the Post was able to see nearby the village of Kudne below as well as the village of Jaba, and other Syrian villages and hills deeper into the distance.

Looking to the Israeli side of the border, I was able to see Alonei Habashan and Keshet, which are slightly east of the Gamla National Park and Katzrin in the Golan.

The Post approached the Syrian base at Tel Kudne on an extremely bumpy road in a Sandcat Tigris, a small armored vehicle, winding through the Kudne village for a couple of kilometers, which was almost entirely deserted.

During the couple hours that the Post was in Syrian territory, I only saw one Syrian civilian and not a single Syrian soldier despite having a 360-view of several kilometers around the area.

IDF sources said that the country’s new rulers, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have not yet had the time to send any forces to the southern border, being that they invaded Damascus from the North and were also themselves surprised at how quickly they advanced.

The base appeared rundown and poorly kept, which would not necessarily be presumed, given that the IDF said that the Syrian soldiers manning the base only fled from it on Friday, less than a week ago.

Sources from the IDF said that the state of the base and its weaponry was more poorly kept than bases belonging to Hamas and Hezbollah, which the IDF has recently overrun.

IDF Division 210 managed to capture a number of Syrian tanks and other abandoned weaponry when they invaded on Saturday.

Brig. Gen. Yair Palai commands Division 210 as part of the Northern Command but was also involved during the current war in fighting in central Gaza and other places.

The top of the mountain was surrounded by an approximately two-meter-deep trench to provide cover for the defending Syrian forces, with several sniper and lookout windows that could provide the Syrian soldiers an advantage against any invaders lower down the mountain.

Stopping terror

At Tel Kudne, IDF Chief Spokesman Daniel Hagari told the Post, “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 have prevented a terror attack on an UNDOF base,” continued Hagari.

Further, he told the Post, “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.”

IDF not planning to head to Damascus

“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. This area of Syria is not stable. We need make sure that our border is safe,” he added.

An open-ended withdrawal date

Despite Hagari’s guarantees that the IDF has no intention of occupying Syria indefinitely, IDF sources and government sources have left the withdrawal date open-ended and to be based on when Israel feels there is no significant threat from HTS.

It is unclear exactly how such an understanding will be achieved given that it is highly unlikely that HTS would normalize relations with Israel, viewed still by most of the Arab world as a hostile state, though Israel has normalized relations with six Muslim countries.

Previously, the Israeli-Syrian border had been mainly quiet with an indefinite state of war in a formal sense, but with an informal understanding that Syrian forces had no chance to successfully combat the IDF, such that they would not actually invade.

IDF sources were far from sure whether HTS, which has significant jihadist elements and was previously affiliated with al-Qaeda, will keep as quiet a border with Israel.

On the other hand, IDF sources said that they have already had contacts with HTS-affiliated officials on smaller issues.

For example, after some Syrian rebels attacked a UN site and stole some UN items, IDF officials were able to relay messages to higher up HTS affiliated officials, leading to the stolen items being returned within a relatively short time.

IDF 474 Brigade Commander Col. Benny Katah was in high spirits about the achievements of his forces to date in taking over the buffer zone near Israel’s border to provide extra insurance of security should the HTS group decide to be more actively hostile to Israel then the previous Assad regime.

Despite all of the caution, IDF sources were positive about Iranian forces leaving Syria in large numbers.

They said that only a smaller group of Iranian forces remain compared to before the fall of the Assad regime – something which had continuously worried Israeli officials for over a decade.

The Post also visited the site of where a series of large Israeli construction vehicles and bulldozers are hard at work digging deep trenches slightly into Syrian territory to establish an additional small security zone which will be hard to cross for potential invaders.

IDF sources at first said that the trench was so deep and that some obstacles and large rocks placed at critical junctures were so large that potential invaders simply would not be able to penetrate them.

Pressed that Hamas had used bulldozers in such instances to invade Israel on October 7, 2023, and that potential Syrian invaders could do the same, IDF sources acknowledged no defense was foolproof but said that the new trenches would even, in a worst-case scenario, significantly slow any invaders down, giving more time to defend Jewish border villages.

Israel has been digging some trenches quietly for some time, but the newest ones are larger and deeper into Israeli territory, though still not very deep into Syria.