Syrian rebels agreed to surrender their last pockets of control in southwest Quneitra province to the government, state media reported Thursday, making way for Damascus to re-establish its authority along the Israeli frontier.
The deal, confirmed in its general outlines by a monitoring group and opposition activists in Quneitra, will put the Syrian government face-to-face with Israel along most of its southern frontier for the first time since 2011, when an uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule swept throughout Syria.
Israel has refrained from taking sides in Syria's seven-year-long civil war, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated he does not object to the government's return to southwest Syria – as long as Iran and its regional proxy, Hezbollah, stay clear of the border.
Israel has also said it would demand strict adherence to the 1974 disengagement deal with the Syrian army on the Golan, threatening a "harsh response" to any attempt by Syrian forces to deploy in that zone. The deal, concluded after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, created a buffer zone patrolled by the U.N. Disengagement and Observer Force.
Details of the deal sent by the rebel source included a provision that Russian military police would accompany the same two Syrian army brigades "to the cease-fire line and the demilitarized zone, according to the 1974 agreement."
The provisions did not elaborate on any implications of the deployment of military units on the 1974 agreement.
U.S. President Donald Trump said at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in Helsinki that both had agreed to work together to help ensure Israel's security.
Putin, Assad's most powerful ally, cited the need to restore the situation along the Golan borders to the state that prevailed before the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011.
A fleet of buses reached Quneitra on Thursday night to pick up fighters, activists and other residents who refuse to accept the terms of surrender, and evacuate them to rebel-held areas in northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
An affiliate of the Islamic State group continues to hold a sliver of the frontier. The group is not party to the agreement between the government and rebels.
Backed by Russian air power and unopposed by Assad's foreign adversaries, government forces have swept through southwestern Syria in the last month in one of the swiftest campaigns of the war, forcing surrender on massively outgunned rebels.
The campaign, which has already restored Assad's control over a critical portion of the frontier with Jordan, marks another milestone in his efforts to recover control of the country.
Echoing surrender terms imposed on rebels elsewhere, opposition fighters agreed to give up heavy and medium-sized weapons. Those wishing to stay in the area will "settle" their status with the state, meaning accepting a return of its rule.
Those who reject the deal will be given safe passage out to the opposition-held province of Idlib in the northwest, according to terms that were also reported by a military news outlet run by Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and is fighting in Syria in support of Assad.
Once the southwestern campaign is finished, Assad's focus is likely to turn to the two remaining areas outside his grasp.
These are the rebel-held northwest, where the presence of Turkish forces will complicate any military campaign, and large areas of the northeast and east that are held by Kurdish-led militias, supported by 2,000 U.S. troops on the ground.
Delegations from the government and rebels met several times over the last two days to negotiate the terms of surrender, said opposition activist and photographer Moaz al-Assaad.
Thousands of residents – including rebel fighters, media activists, medical workers and civilians – may be heading to north Syria instead of staying behind in Quneitra, according to al-Assaad.
The U.N. and human rights organizations have condemned such evacuations as forced displacement. Few who have left are expecting to be able to return to their homes in the near-term.
Earlier on Thursday, a fleet of buses helped evacuate the last remaining residents from Shiite, pro-government villages in northern Syria that endured three years of rebel siege, to government territory in the nearby Aleppo province.
Some 7,000 people were evacuated from Foua and Kfraya, according to state media.
The transfers, which have become a fixture of the war's later stages, are a conspicuous marker of the titanic shifts in Syria's demographics.
Waves of violence against civilians and unforgiving terms of surrender have resulted in the reassortment of the Syrian population. The country's majority Sunni population has been pushed out of the cities and, disproportionately, into camps and exile, while minorities have moved closer to the centers of government control.
The government was expected to release 1,500 militants and opposition activists from its jails in exchange for the Foua and Kfraya evacuations, according to Ahmed el-Shiekho, an official for the Syrian Civil Defense, a search-and-rescue group aligned with the opposition.
But it only released 200, el-Sheikho said, including many who were only picked up in the last few months for minor criminal offenses – prisoners with no connection to the ongoing political turmoil.
In southern Syria, rebels have been powerless to stop a month of government advances through southwest Syria's Daraa and Quneitra provinces, facilitated by a relentless Russian aerial campaign against towns and villages held by the opposition.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced by the fighting, and the U.N.'s children's agency, UNICEF, appealed for access to reach some 55,000 children in need of humanitarian assistance in Quneitra.
Earlier this week, dozens of Syrians marched toward the frontier, pleading for help as government forces, backed by Russia, stepped up airstrikes on Quneitra. Israel has quietly treated thousands of displaced Syrians for wounds and illnesses over the years.
On Thursday, the IDF announced that its 210th Division carried out six special missions this week to provide humanitarian aid to Syrians in refugee camps on the Golan Heights. The aid included 72 tons of food, 70 tents, 9,000 liters (2,400 gallons) of gasoline, flats of medicine and medical supplies, as well as clothes and toys.
"The IDF is continuing to help the Syrians in the camps set up on the Syrian Golan Heights," the military said.
Many of those trapped by the Syrian government's advances were hoping for relief from Israel, or some sort of a safe zone there, said Areej Ghabash, a local health worker in Quneitra.
"In truth, we have more faith in Israel than the [Syrian] government," she said, adding she would leave Quneitra herself rather than surrender to the authorities.
Al-Assaad said a prisoner exchange involving an al-Qaida-linked group fighting alongside the rebels in Quneitra was still to be negotiated before evacuations could start.
The Syrian leader, with support from Russia and Iran, has all but crushed the revolt after seven years of destructive war that has taken the lives of more than 400,000 Syrians and displaced half the country's population. Nearly 6 million Syrians – or roughly a quarter of the country's pre-war population – are now refugees outside their own country.
