For the first time in 50 years, Israel's military has entered the demilitarised zone along the occupied Golan Heights and seized Syrian territory following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that he had directed ground forces to take control of the buffer zone established under the 1947 ceasefire agreement with Syria. This decision came after armed rebel groups ousted Assad from Damascus and assumed power. Netanyahu justified the move by claiming that the ceasefire agreement had effectively collapsed as Syrian soldiers allegedly abandoned their positions, leaving the area unsecured and necessitating Israeli intervention.

“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” the prime minister said as Assad's fall added another layer of complexity to the Middle East crisis, which geopolitical analysts said was at the brink of regional war.

The Israeli military issued an "urgent warning" to residents of five communities in southern Syria to stay home shortly after Netanyahu’s statement.

“The fighting in your area is forcing the IDF to act and we do not intend to harm you,” a military spokesperson, Colonel Avichay Adraee said, referring to the Israeli forces.

“We attacked ammunition depots in southern Syria and in the Damascus airport area for fear, they might fall into the hands of armed groups and local factions,” an unnamed Israeli security official was quoted as saying by Israeli public broadcaster KAN.

He claimed that Israel was working to "thwart any potential threats and prevent any damage to its air superiority in Syria”. The Israeli military added that it was "not interfering with the internal events in Syria".

Israel captured the Golan Heights during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed the region, a move recognised as illegal by the international community, with the exception of the United States, which acknowledges it as occupied Syrian territory.

The takeover of Syria by insurgent groups, led by Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a rebranded al-Qaeda affiliate, marked a major geopolitical shift in the Middle East. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government dismantled a critical stronghold from which Iran and Russia had projected influence across the Arab world for decades.

"A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory," said Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the head of HTS.

Speaking to a massive gathering on Sunday at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, a place of considerable religious significance, Golani, a former lieutenant to slain ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said with hard work Syria would be "a beacon for the Islamic nation”.