Follow the latest on Syria Gulf countries on Thursday issued a firm call for Israel to withdraw from the Syrian lands it recently occupied after taking advantage of a security vacuum following the collapse of the former regime.

Israel’s military has seized a strategic mountain top in its contested border area with Syria and advanced on positions beyond it, reshaping the frontier potentially for the long term.

Assad’s fall to bomb all the Syrian military assets it wanted to keep out of the rebels’ hands – striking nearly 500 targets, destroying the navy, and taking out, it claims, 90% of Syria’s known surface-to-air missiles.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Tice's mother his country won't conduct airstrikes near a secret prison outside Damascus.

Israel is celebrating the fall of Assad because it breaks the noose that Iran had been patiently tightening around Israel’s borders in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Tehran’s pincer is now broken and rendered useless. From the point of view of Israel’s wider conflict with the Islamic Republic, the collapse of Assad’s regime is a strategic victory.

The buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights was created by the U.N. after the 1973 Mideast war. A

The Israeli military hit weapons depots and air defenses, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel has said it aims to keep military equipment away from extremists.

Israeli troops will remain in Syria slightly beyond a buffer zone -- created by the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement -- for "strategic reasons," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement Thursday.

Israel has paved the way for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear programme by eliminating swathes of Syria’s military infrastructure, according to officials speaking to The Telegraph following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was considered the capital ... were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel and where they are currently banned from returning.

The military’s expanded perch on the peak of Mount Hermon, straddling the so-called disengagement zone, gives Israel clear sightlines to the Syrian capital, Damascus, 25 miles away. Israeli ...