Tensions along the Israeli-Syrian frontier have spiked in recent weeks following the collapse of the former Assad government, as a newly formed Israeli settler advocacy group has publicly called for the systematic cultivation and commercial sale of agricultural produce grown on seized Syrian land in the southern regions of the country.
Pioneers of Bashan, the organization pushing for permanent Israeli settlement expansion into newly occupied Syrian territories, launched its call to action targeting the fertile lands held by Israel in Daraa and Quneitra governorates. In a public post shared on the social platform X, the group highlighted that roughly 2,000 tons of wheat had already been harvested this year from lands within the small Quneitra District alone. The statement went on to make a controversial, inflammatory claim that the fertile region would produce far higher yields when worked by what the group called “pioneering Jews” rather than the Sunni communities that currently inhabit the area, falsely alleging those communities support Hamas.
Founded only in April 2025, Pioneers of Bashan emerged just four months after armed opposition groups overthrew the government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. That collapse of central state authority, which brought Ahmed al-Sharaa’s transitional government to power, created a power vacuum that Israel exploited to expand its long-standing occupation of Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights — a region Israel has held illegally since the 1967 Six-Day War. The group has repeatedly framed its settlement advocacy through religious framing, citing ancient Biblical texts as flawed justification for seizing additional Syrian land for Jewish settlement.
Escalating Israeli ground incursions have already uprooted local communities in the region. Just this past Sunday, Israeli military convoys advanced into the village of Abidin in Daraa governorate, where local residents gathered to block the entry route by stacking stones across the road. According to official Syrian state media, Israeli forces responded to the nonviolent protest with heavy artillery fire, forcing the entire village population to flee to safer neighboring settlements overnight.
Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official formal statement condemning the violation of its sovereignty. “We condemn in the strongest terms the ongoing Israeli attacks, represented by repeated incursions into Syrian territory in Quneitra and Daraa provinces and the deliberate targeting of civilian populated areas with artillery shelling. This is a blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity that violates all international law and UN resolutions,” the statement read.
Israeli government officials, particularly far-right members of the current governing coalition, have ramped up warmongering rhetoric in recent weeks, openly framing the new Syrian leadership as an imminent threat to justify further military escalation. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, a prominent far-right figure in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, laid out his aggressive stance in a series of recent radio interviews, labeling al-Sharaa’s transitional government as part of what he inaccurately called a “radical Sunni axis of evil” across the Middle East.
Chikli argued that what he described as a jihadist regime rooted in the ideologies of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, which he claimed holds aspirations to claim Jerusalem, could never coexist peacefully alongside the state of Israel. In an additional interview with Israel’s Army Radio last Thursday, Chikli claimed a new anti-Israel alliance has formed between Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar — a bloc he claimed poses a far greater threat to Israeli security than Iran, even amid Tehran’s recent ceasefire agreement with the United States.