Israeli raids in Deraa and Quneitra continue while Damascus insists a security deal is nearly done

SANA reported, in an account relayed by Al Jazeera, that Israeli forces shot dead a civilian with a disability during a raid on the village of Jamla in the western Deraa countryside on Thursday 22 October, and that in a separate raid the same day on Turnejeh in the Quneitra countryside they searched homes and detained one person. The account is single-sourced to Syrian state media. The victim is not named and no age is given, and we found no Israeli military response in a sweep of the following 24 hours. An Al Jazeera feature filed from Qatana on 17 October carried a detainee, identified only as Ahmed, describing beating and torture in Israeli custody — one anonymous testimony — and reported that the Red Cross has been denied access to detainees in Israeli detention since 7 October 2023.

The same southern countryside is the ground the two governments have spent a year negotiating over. The Jerusalem Post reported on 23 September that al-Sharaa said direct talks had been running for nearly a year and had reached “90% agreement”, while insisting on a return to the 1974 lines. On 17 October the same paper reported a Netanyahu–Sharaa call, and conceded in its own text that the two sides “have yet to reach a comprehensive agreement governing military deployments and security arrangements along their shared frontier”; neither side had responded to it by publication. In late August, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani described the talks as frozen but due to resume, urging Israel to take a “historic opportunity”. Shibani met King Abdullah II in Amman on Thursday and restated opposition to the strikes, according to Syria TV as summarised by the Syrian Observer; no Jordanian readout was available.

Assessment: Hold the two categories apart. “Ninety per cent” is al-Sharaa’s characterisation of a process; a raid on Jamla is an event, even when the only account of it comes from a state broadcaster with an obvious interest in the telling. The asymmetry is the point: Damascus needs an agreement to retire the buffer-zone occupation and clear a path to Gulf money, while Israel loses little by continuing to operate and talk at the same time. Two things are reportable on their own terms over the weekend — whether the Israeli military answers the Jamla account at all, and whether Amman publishes a readout. If it does not, Shibani’s Jordan trip was positioning, not diplomacy.