After the ambush that wounded six IDF reservists in southern Syria, officials say Israel will not pull back from seized buffer areas or Mount Hermon and sees no near-term path to an accord with Damascus
Security officials said there is no indication so far that al-Sharaa’s people were directly involved, but stressed the incident underscores Israel’s view that it must not allow hostile forces to entrench themselves near the border or withdraw from areas it has seized, especially Mount Hermon, and that there is no realistic path to an agreement with Damascus while Syria remains unstable.
They said the incident reinforces Israel’s view that it cannot allow hostile forces to entrench themselves near the border, and that there is no realistic path to an agreement with Damascus for now because Syria remains unstable. “More than anything, this shows we must not withdraw from the areas we captured, especially Mount Hermon,” officials said.
The unusual battle in southern Syria was with terrorists from al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, a Lebanese Sunni movement founded in 1964 as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon that later expanded into Syria.
The organization’s military wing was established in the 1980s and has since operated in cooperation with other terror groups against Israel, working with Hamas in Lebanon and Syria and with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The group is now expected to suffer a major blow after U.S. President Donald Trump announced earlier this week that he will designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.
The organization’s armed wing is known as the al-Fajr Forces. Its operatives have taken part in attacks against Israel during the “Swords of Iron” war, alongside their Sunni allies in Hamas and Shiite partners in Iran’s so-called axis of resistance. The group maintains military sites in southern Lebanon and terror infrastructure along the Syria-Lebanon border, as well as in the Beit Jinn area where the clash took place. It is involved in recruiting and directing operatives and is considered a relatively significant player in the northern arena. During the war, the IDF struck the group’s operatives and infrastructure in Syria and Lebanon.
After the clash in which six IDF reservists, three of them seriously, were wounded overnight in southern Syria Israel sent stern messages to President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government and began preparing a range of possible responses.
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