DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- Israeli forces carried out a new incursion into Syria’s southern Quneitra province on Sunday, setting up a temporary checkpoint to search civilians and passing vehicles, according to the Syria Arab News Agency (SANA).
A patrol of three Israeli military vehicles advanced along the Al-Hiran–Al-Rafid Road in the southern countryside of Quneitra, where troops established a checkpoint to inspect passersby and vehicles. No arrests or clashes were reported.
The latest incursion came a day after the Israeli army raided and searched a house in Wadi al-Ruqqad in the western countryside of neighboring Daraa province, according to Syria’s Alikhbariah TV. The broadcaster did not provide further details about the aggression. 
Southern Syria has witnessed recurring Israeli incursions and attacks for months, including raids, searches and arrests. The violations intensified after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024, when Israel declared the collapse of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement and expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights by seizing the demilitarized buffer zone.
Yet for all the gravity of these incursions, the response from Damascus has been conspicuous only by its absence. Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, a former Daesh and Al-Qaeda deputy who now presents himself as Syria’s new strongman, has offered no meaningful resistance to the steady erosion of Syrian sovereignty. 
His takfiri regime, preoccupied with consolidating power through sectarian violence against Alawite, Christian and Druze minorities, has turned a blind eye to the Israeli military’s daily provocations in the south. 
The same forces that once fought under the banner of takfiri terrorism now appear remarkably accommodating when it comes to Israeli occupation and Western colonial designs on Syrian territory.
Checkpoints in Quneitra and raids in Daraa have become routine. Homes are searched, civilians are detained, and the buffer zone that once served as a demilitarized barrier is now a staging ground for further Israeli expansion. 
The new rulers of Syria, it seems, have chosen their battles carefully—and the battle for Syria’s territorial integrity is not among them. Instead, they direct their energy inward, purging real and perceived enemies while foreign troops consolidate their grip on the Golan Heights and beyond.
What remains of Syrian sovereignty is being dismantled piece by piece, not by Israeli bombs alone but by the willing complicity of a regime that has traded resistance for survival. 
The checkpoints in Quneitra are not merely military positions; they are monuments to an abandonment of national duty, erected with the silent approval of a regime too weak or too indifferent to challenge them.