The BBC speaks to Syrians who are watching Israel’s invasion

An hour’s drive from Damascus, on a country road to the Syrian village of Hadar, we meet the Israeli army.

Two military vehicles and several soldiers in full combat gear stand at an improvised checkpoint – a foreign power in a country celebrating its freedom. They waved at us.

It was evidence of Israel’s invasion of Syrian territory – a temporary takeover, he said, of a UN-controlled buffer zone established in a ceasefire agreement 50 years ago.

“Maybe they’ll leave, maybe they’ll stay, maybe they’ll make the area safe and then they’ll leave,” said Riyad Zaidan, who lives in Hadar. “We want to hope, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

The head of the village, Jawdat al-Tawil, pointed to the territory of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967, clearly visible from the Hadara terraces.

Many residents still have relatives living here.

Now they see Israeli forces moving regularly around their own village, parts of which jut into the demilitarized zone. On the slope above, Israeli bulldozers can be seen working on the mountainside.

A week after the fall of President Assad’s regime, the sense of freedom here becomes fatalism.

Jawdat al-Taweel proudly told me how the village defended itself against formations during the Syrian civil war, and showed me portraits of dozens of men who died in the process.

“We don’t allow anyone to trespass on our land,” he said. “(But) Israel is a state – we cannot oppose it. We used to oppose individuals, but Israel is a superpower.”

Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Israel has also carried out hundreds of airstrikes on military targets across Syria.

And the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu announced new plans to double the population of Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, saying the move was necessary because of a “new front” that had opened in Syria.

Speaking before the plan was unveiled, Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa warned that Israel’s military maneuvers risked an unjustified escalation in the region and said his administration did not want a conflict with Israel.

Israel’s foreign ministry said its action was necessary because of threats posed by jihadist groups operating along the ceasefire line with Syria, describing its military incursions there as “limited and temporary”.

The people of Hadar are mostly from the Druze community, a tight-knit, reclusive group that broke away from mainstream Shia Islam centuries ago.

When Israel occupied part of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war and later unilaterally annexed it, some Druze decided to stay and take Israeli citizenship.

Al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which ousted President Assad this month, has family roots in the occupied Golan Heights.

Some here on the Syrian-controlled side fear that Israel’s plan is to seize more territory for itself.

For years, Israel has been fighting an Iranian-backed militia that supports Assad. This border region is a key route for the supply of weapons between Tehran and its subordinate forces, including the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

The fall of Assad has made these groups – and Iran – weaker. But Israel has since stepped up its military campaign, taking advantage of the political vacuum to expand its reach.

It also targeted military equipment left behind by Assad’s forces at bases across the country, worried about who might use it in the future.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that “imminent risks” to Israel remained and that recent events in Syria had heightened the threat “despite the moderate appearance that rebel leaders claim to be presenting.”

Marginalized by the Assad regime and recognized as infidels by Sunni jihadist groups such as HTS, Syria’s Druze are more tolerant of Israel than many other communities here.

The village has previously fought against Iran-backed groups that Israel sees as a threat here, but Jawdat al-Taweel told me that alliances in the area are changing and that he is now in talks with those groups about reaching a deal.

Syria is not a place where people rely on only one ally or fight only one enemy.

“We just need peace,” resident Riyad Zaidan told me. “We have had enough of war, enough of blood, enough of hard life – we have to stop.”

Religious minorities such as the Druze have suffered under Assad. The country’s new leaders from HTS have pledged tolerance and respect for Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious groups.

But eight years ago, the group was still linked to global jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Around the time HTS split from al-Qaeda in 2016, Jawdat al-Tawil’s son, Abdo, was killed by their militia on the outskirts of Hadar while fighting alongside the Syrian army.

He showed me the trail where 30-year-old Abdo died, and I asked how he felt about HTS now taking control of Syria.

“At first it was gang groups. Now they got rid of the tyrant (Assad) and came to power,” he said. “They must rule with justice, provide security and ensure people’s rights.”

“It is not yet clear whether they have changed,” he said. – I hope so.

Additional reporting by Youssef Shomali, Charlotte Scarr and Mayar Mohana