Syrian villagers near the Golan Heights say Israeli forces are banning them from their fields

Israeli forces have set up a position in an abandoned Syrian army base in the village of Maariyah and prevented local farmers from accessing their fields, residents said Thursday.

Associated Press journalists who visited the area saw the Israeli troops from a distance and watched a local resident waving a white flag approach to speak with them.

The village, on the western edge of Syria’s southern Daraa province, is near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but outside of a buffer zone in the Golan established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Syria and Israel.

Abdel Raouf Issa, a resident of Maariyah, said the Israeli military had penetrated about 1 kilometer (two-thirds of a mile) into the village and “is demanding that we hand over all weapons to the occupation. We told them that we have no weapons at all.”

“They prevented us from farming. They prevented us from moving,” he said. “We call on the United Nations to remove the occupation as soon as possible.”

Kamal Saleh Damara, a local official in the village, said, “Thank God, we were happy that HTS came,” referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the main insurgent group in the coalition that unseated Assad. “But then Israel came, and it is preventing people from coming and going and moving.”

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The Israeli military said in a statement that it is “operating within the buffer zone and in several additional locations in its proximity to ensure the security of Israel’s northern border.” It declined to comment on specific locations where its troops are deployed.

Israel seized a swath of southern Syria along the border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights shortly after Syrian President Bashar Assad was ousted by rebels on Dec. 8.

The capture of the buffer zone, a roughly 400-square-kilometer (155-square-mile) demilitarized area in Syrian territory, has sparked condemnation, with critics accusing Israel of violating a 1974 ceasefire and exploiting the chaos in Syria in the wake of Assad’s ouster to make a land grab.

Israel seized control of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it — a move not recognized by most of the international community

On Wednesday, a group of residents and dignitaries from the buffer zone in Quneitra province put out a statement complaining that the Israeli forces had forcibly displaced the residents of some villages although they “showed restraint toward the advancing forces and did not resist them.” However, they said some residents were later allowed to return

The statement called for Israeli forces to withdraw “especially from vital facilities such as the Quneitra provincial government building, the main roads and the water wells and tanks serving the area.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israeli forces will stay there until another arrangement is in place “that ensures Israel’s security.”

Netanyahu made the comments from the summit of Mount Hermon — the highest peak in the area — inside Syria, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with Golan Heights.

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Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Abby Sewell in Damascus contributed to this report.