A telling footage circulating on social media on August 18 showed a group of settlers waving Israeli flags and hammering signposts into the ground in what they declared to be a new settlement near the border town Alonei Habashan. Children, who outnumbered the adults in the video, clapped, danced and celebrated the founding of what they called the settlement of “Nave Habashan” on Syrian land, currently under Israeli military control. The group called themselves the “Bashan Pioneers” – invoking a biblical name for the Golan Heights and southern Syria, and announced their intention to remain at the site for an “extended period of time”.
