ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Syrians in Hama countryside staged a protest on Friday against Israel’s ongoing military incursions and attacks in the south of the country.

The protesters “categorically” rejected the “violations” perpetrated by the Israeli government, calling on the international community to press Israel into halting the “aggression”, according to Syria’s state-run SANA news agency.

After the new authorities in Damascus toppled Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered Israeli forces to complete the takeover of the 1974 buffer zone in the Golan Heights, separating the two states, claiming that the 1974 Disengagement Agreement was void until order was restored in Syria.

Syrian leaders have repeatedly condemned the occupation, calling on Israel to withdraw its troops.

According to the Syrian state media, several other provinces also witnessed protests against the Israeli incursion and attacks on Daraa and Quneitra. However, it did not provide details on the other protests or name the provinces in which they took place.

Israeli forces targeted two villages in Quneitra’s countryside with artillery shells earlier on Friday, according to Syrian state TV.

State media claimed on Thursday that Israeli forces had killed a civilian with disability in the village of Jamla in the Daraa countryside.

In August, Katz visited Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Shaykh), a move that drew the ire of the Syrian foreign ministry, which denounced the “illegal” visit.

The Israeli minister said in a speech to soldiers at the time that “We will not move from Mount Hermon and the security zone as long as there are jihadist threats to the State of Israel.”

At the 81st UN General Assembly meeting in September, Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa rejected Israel’s attack on his country. “We thought that [the attacks] were from an era that was gone. We reject the Israeli aggression that undermines our peace and security,” he said in his speech.

According to Sharaa, Syria has been subject to 500 airstrikes, more than 1,200 incursions, and 300 detentions since the coming of the new government to power.