In recent days, IDF officers held their first meetings with leaders of Syrian villages in the area captured by the IDF in Ramat HaGolan following the fall of the Assad regime, Ynet reported.

The officers met with the village elders in their homes and reassured them that IDF forces would not harm the villagers and their daily lives will not be disturbed.

Capt. Omer, a company commander from the 77th Battalion of the 7th Armored Brigade, met with the elder of the village of Umm Batnah, the deepest area the IDF has advanced in Syria, 12 kilometers (8 miles) from the border.

“I asked the village elder to collect weapons from residents after they had taken rifles from abandoned Syrian military outposts,” the officer said. The residents complied with the order and turned in the weapons.

The IDF is currently operating in seven villages in the Syrian Golan and will remain in the area until the area can be transferred to an “established and defined state entity” to prevent terrorist groups from seizing control.

A video that circulated online on Israeli social media over the weekend shows Druze residents in the village of Hader, near the Israeli border in southern Syria, calling on Israel to annex them.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)