Israel’s military has seized a strategic mountain top in its contested border area with Syria and advanced on positions beyond it, reshaping the frontier potentially for the long term.

Israel advances to protect its borders with Syria, and Trump calls Turkey a "key player in shaping the post-Assad political landscape."

Assad’s fall to bomb all the Syrian military assets it wanted to keep out of the rebels’ hands – striking nearly 500 targets, destroying the navy, and taking out, it claims, 90% of Syria’s known surface-to-air missiles.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Tice's mother his country won't conduct airstrikes near a secret prison outside Damascus.

The buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights was created by the U.N. after the 1973 Mideast war. A

Israel is celebrating the fall of Assad because it breaks the noose that Iran had been patiently tightening around Israel’s borders in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Tehran’s pincer is now broken and rendered useless. From the point of view of Israel’s wider conflict with the Islamic Republic, the collapse of Assad’s regime is a strategic victory.

Israeli troops will remain in Syria slightly beyond a buffer zone -- created by the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement -- for "strategic reasons," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement Thursday.

The Israeli military hit weapons depots and air defenses, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel has said it aims to keep military equipment away from extremists.

The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was considered the capital ... were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel and where they are currently banned from returning.

The military’s expanded perch on the peak of Mount Hermon, straddling the so-called disengagement zone, gives Israel clear sightlines to the Syrian capital, Damascus, 25 miles away. Israeli ...

An Israeli military spokesperson this week denied that forces were “advancing toward” Damascus. Israeli artillery on Mount Hermon in 1974. - Alain Dejean/Sygma/Getty Images Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau in southwestern Syria ...