Syrian villagers near the Golan Heights say Israeli forces are banning them from their fields

Associated Press

Residents of a Syrian village near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights say Israeli forces have set up a position in an abandoned army base and are preventing local farmers from accessing their fields. Associated Press journalists who visited the area saw the Israeli troops from a distance. The village, on the western edge of Syria’s southern Daraa province, is outside of a buffer zone in the Golan established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria. Israel seized a swath of southern Syria along the border with the Golan Heights shortly after Syrian President Bashar Assad was ousted by rebels on Dec. 8.