Israel holds 49 Syrians without charges from seized buffer zone
Families get no answers from Jerusalem Damascus or the UN, military refuses to discuss cases until relatives supply ID numbers
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Israel has detained dozens of Syrians. Families are desperate for answers
independent.co.uk
Israel has detained 49 Syrians since seizing the UN-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria in December 2024, according to Syrian government officials and UN-backed investigators. Sixteen have been released over the past year; the rest remain held, many without charge sheets and without their families knowing where they are.
Ali al-Abdullah spent more than five months in Israeli detention centres after being taken from his village in the southwest. He says he was beaten and placed in solitary confinement, and that no charges were ever brought against him. Kinan Baker was taken in a middle-of-the-night raid on his home last year; his family has heard nothing since and does not know where he is held or why.
Israel moved into the 235-square-kilometre buffer zone after the ouster of Bashar Assad, declared the 1974 separation agreement void, and has since erected outposts and run raids, strikes and incursions through Quneitra and Daraa provinces, reaching the countryside southwest of Damascus. The military says the presence is needed to defend the northern border against Hezbollah, and that troops "question and detain individuals when there is reasonable suspicion of their involvement in terrorist activity." It rejects allegations of abusing detainees. The Syria Justice and Accountability Center, a Washington-based group that interviewed former detainees and witnesses, recorded accounts of stress positions and threats at gunpoint.
Syria's new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has demanded the withdrawal. Mohammed Saeed, a spokesperson for Quneitra province, called the allegations of militant activity "baseless lies," noting that the civil war had already cleared the area of Iranian and Hezbollah forces. Families of detainees say their pleas to the Syrian government and the UN have gone unanswered — their only remaining leverage is publicity.
The Israeli military says it cannot address specific cases because detainees and their families have not provided their Syrian government ID numbers.