Mohammed Al-Ali never got to celebrate the fall of Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024. It was the night his home was stolen by Israeli soldiers. As liberated civilians flooded the streets of Syria’s cities in euphoria, the Israeli military burst into his home in the village of Al-Hamidiya and ordered Al-Ali and his family to leave.

“They barely gave us ten minutes to get out,” Al-Ali, 50, told Drop Site News, teary-eyed as he recalled the night, clutching a cushion in his lap. “We weren’t able to bring anything with us, we left our whole lives behind.”

Al-Ali would never see his house again. Six months after his forced eviction, Israel demolished his home, alongside 15 others in Al-Hamidiya located in the Quneitra countryside of southwest Syria. According to a Syrian official, residents’ reported that Israeli soldiers told them that the homes “blocked sight lines” from a newly constructed military base at the edge of the village. The official dismissed this pretext, saying “Israel uses the same justifications in Gaza and Lebanon.”

Al-Ali’s home had been built by his father. “That house was my life. It is where my children were born and raised,” he explained, sitting in his grandparents’ home in the nearby village of Jubat Al-Khashab. “They stole our home and our life. They stole our memories.”

Over the last year, the new military base has been established on a hill overlooking Jubat Al-Khashab, where Al-Ali now lives. Residents are prohibited from approaching, and an Israeli drone whizzed into view within minutes of Drop Site photographing the base.

#world