An hour’s drive from Damascus, on a country road into the Syrian village of Hadar, we meet Israel’s army.
Two military vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear man an impromptu checkpoint – a foreign authority in a country celebrating its freedom. They waved us through.
It was evidence of Israel’s incursion into Syrian territory – the temporary seizure, it said, of a UN-monitored buffer zone, set up in a ceasefire agreement 50 years ago.
“Maybe they’ll leave, maybe they’ll stay, maybe they’ll make the area safe then go away,” said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. “We want to hope, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
The village chief, Jawdat al-Tawil, pointed to the Golan Heights territory Israel occupied in 1967, clearly visible from Hadar’s terraces.
Many residents here have relatives still living there.
Now, they see Israeli forces routinely moving around their own village, parts of which jut into the demilitarized zone. On a slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the hillside.
A week after President Assad’s regime fell, the sense of freedom here comes tinged with fatalism.
Jawdat al-Tawil told me proudly how the village had defended itself against militia groups during the Syrian civil war, and showed me portraits of the dozens of men who had died doing so.
“We don’t allow anyone to transgress on our land,” he said. “[But] Israel is a state – we can’t stand against it. We used to stand up to individuals, but Israel is a super-power.”