Published on 6/22/2026
Today, Monday, an Israeli force entered the village of Al-Arda in the Yarmouk Basin area in the western countryside of Daraa, southern Syria, before withdrawing after carrying out a field deployment that lasted for a limited period.
The official Syrian News Agency (SANA) quoted the mayor of Ma’ariya and Abdeen Muwaffaq Mahmoud as saying that the incursion force consisted of three vehicles, including two military vehicles and a “High Lux” vehicle, with about 20 soldiers on board, as it entered the village and the surrounding agricultural lands.
Mahmoud explained that the Israeli force arrived in the area of Bir Bilal Al-Ghubait, and set up a temporary checkpoint that lasted for about an hour, before withdrawing towards the Al-Jazeera barracks via an agricultural road north of the village of Maariya.
This development comes a day after the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) carried out a field tour in the villages of Abdeen and Mariya in the western countryside of Daraa, which included a number of neighborhoods and streets, during which it met with local residents and shop owners to review the field conditions in the region.
After the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on December 8, 2024, Israel announced the collapse of the separation of forces agreement concluded between the two sides since 1974, and occupied the Syrian buffer zone, while Damascus confirmed its commitment to the agreement.
Damascus accuses Israel of continuing to violate the disengagement agreement by carrying out incursions into southern Syria, in addition to raids, arrests, leveling of lands, and firing shells in border areas.
The Syrian government asserts that all measures taken by Israel inside Syrian territory are “null and void” and do not have any legal effects under international law, renewing its call on the international community to take action to put an end to what it describes as repeated violations, and to oblige Israel to completely withdraw from the Syrian territory where its forces are deployed in the south.
