Reports that Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army's Arabic-language spokesperson of Iraqi-Turkish origin, entered the town of Qatana near Damascus have stirred controversy across Syria.
Israeli media outlets, including Maariv and Kan, initially claimed Adraee had arrived in Qatana, a town just 20 kilometres southwest of Damascus, and had met with local residents.
However, Syrian sources confirmed to Syria TV that Adraee never entered Qatana itself but instead toured villages in the Mount Hermon region within the administrative boundaries of the Qatana district. These included Druze-majority villages such as Beq’asem, Arneh, Qalaat Jandal, and Al-Rimah, areas close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Images of Adraee’s visit, published by Israeli military photographer Rabih Basha, showed him walking through Druze villages in the presence of Israeli soldiers.
The captions described the trip as a "field tour of vital civil projects overseen by the Israeli army in the absence of Syrian state institutions", claiming that local Druze communities were suffering from "repression".
Israeli correspondent Itay Blumental also reposted the images, referring only to "Druze villages near Mount Hermon and the Damascus countryside" without specifying locations.
While Maariv described Adraee's reception in Syria as a "royal welcome", Syrian outlets rejected this framing, noting that the Israeli army provided no official details of the visit or its precise location.
Additional verification of the visit's location came from images showing village signs referencing "Jabal al-Sheikh - Arneh branch", and a shop in Beq'asem with signage linked to known landmarks in the area.
Sources familiar with the region confirmed to The New Arab that the photographs were taken in Beq'asem, a village on the edge of the occupied Golan.
Qatana is the administrative centre of a large district comprising four subdistricts and over a dozen villages, making it plausible that Israeli sources used the name loosely to refer to the wider region.
The visit marks the second time in recent months that Adraee has appeared inside Syrian territory.
In April, he toured the Quneitra region, including Baath City and Qahatiyah, where he posted a video message to Syrians asserting that Israel had "no intention of interfering in Syria’s internal affairs" but would "not allow the presence of armed or extremist elements" near the Golan.
Thursday's visit coincided with a spike in Israeli drone and helicopter activity over southern Syria, particularly in Suweida province.
Israeli forces reportedly entered the town of Umm al-Azam in Quneitra that same evening, where they detained four Syrian men near the Al-Manatra dam. The men were later released, but the incident took place in a zone the Israeli army classifies as a closed military area.