NAHARIYA (AP) — The army was about to launch a nighttime strike on a group of men in southern Syria when the soldiers noticed the long curls dangling from the temples of their targets. The troops held their fire.

These were not Syrian gunmen attempting to breach Israel’s border but religious Jews who had slipped into Syria and were on their way back.

The episode, first reported last week by the Kan public broadcaster and confirmed to The Associated Press by the Israel Defense Forces, has helped raise the profile of a fringe group of Israeli settlers that has staged numerous incursions into Syria, where they hope to establish Jewish settlements.

The IDF has been holding the area in southern Syria for more than a year, but the forays by civilian settler groups into the region only became a regular occurrence recently.

The groups, with members numbering in the dozens, have attempted to cross from Israel to Syria every few days in recent weeks. The military is tasked with reining them in and, while most Israelis regard them as fringe, the wider settlement movement in Israel has strong backers in the country’s far-right government.

The most prominent of the groups behind the incursions in Syria is known as the “Bashan Pioneers.”

Formed early last year, the Bashan Pioneers are a group of right-wing Israeli activists aiming to establish Jewish settlements inside Syria. They are named after the biblical region of Bashan, which includes part of modern-day Syria and neighboring Jordan.

Daraa must be ‘filled with Jewish settlement’

The group has its sights set on an area of southwestern Syria that includes the provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Sweida, and hopes to establish a Jewish outpost there.

Part of this area, including the summit of Mount Hermon, is a “buffer zone” Israel declared in December 2024, soon after the ouster of Syria’s longtime autocratic ruler Bashar al-Assad in an insurgent offensive.

The region was known in Scripture for its fertile land and came to be associated with strength and divine providence. In the Bible, the Israelites under Moses conquered the Bashan from the mythical King Og and it was then handed to some of the Israelite tribes.

Members of the group claim a historical right to these lands and argue that their presence there will help Israel defend the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed.

Some claim that Israeli settlement of the areas would protect........

© The Times of Israel