More than 2.000 meters above the Mediterranean Sea, an Israeli soldier can gaze from the top of Mount Hermon at the valley below him, now filled with thousands of comrades, at least nine new outposts, paved access roads, and freshly dug trenches.
A soldier looks at a section of hundreds of square kilometers that they captured from Syria in early December, following an offensive by Islamist-led rebels that toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Similar scenes are repeated along Israel's borders as troops hold fortified positions inside Lebanon, clear wide swaths of territory in Gaza, and demolish homes in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
“This is a new world,” an Israeli military official said from the mountaintop, adding that an entire division that was once in the occupied Golan Heights had now “advanced into Syria.”
It is the embodiment of a new, highly aggressive Israeli military doctrine that is reshaping the Middle East following the devastating attack by Hamas from Gaza on October 7, 2023, and the outbreak of regional war.
Israel is no longer content with border walls and early warning systems - it is now occupying its neighbors' territories, building buffer zones and bombing what it perceives as threats, all the way to Beirut and Damascus, in massive displays of force.
It's a vision that Israeli officials say was born from the trauma and lessons of October 7, and an internal Israel Defense Forces (IDF) investigation this year concluded that the "strategic mistake" that made the attack possible was allowing Hamas to consolidate control over Gaza.
“You cannot allow an army of terror to be built at your doorstep,” said one senior Israeli military official, who like other interviewees requested anonymity.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that Israel was "changing the face of the Middle East."
In the process, Israel is nullifying internationally recognized borders, violating the sovereignty of its neighbors and - as critics at home and abroad say - raising tensions and the risk of wider conflict.
The renewed Israeli offensive in Gaza, along with expansionism in Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank, has drawn condemnation across the region.
Lebanon's leaders have declared that "there is no peace" and "no lasting stability" until the IDF withdraws from the country, and the new Syrian government has condemned Israel's "continued aggression... in clear violation of national sovereignty and international law."
Israel is nullifying internationally recognized borders, violating the sovereignty of its neighbors and - as critics at home and abroad say - raising tensions and the risk of wider conflict.
Barbara Leaf, a senior State Department official in the Biden administration, said that Israel's actions in Syria "risk provoking unrest and hostility that did not exist before."
In recent weeks, IDF troops in the Syrian security zone have come under fire in two separate incidents, and some analysts are warning of the possibility of an uprising as the new regime in Damascus tries to establish control over the divided country.
“There are many ways to achieve security, there are many channels” besides military force, Leaf said, alluding to the need for secret channels of communication between Israel and Syria.
Since capturing the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war, Israel has considered this elevated territory - of which Mount Hermon is a part - a strategic, protective buffer zone.
However, after Islamist rebels led by Ahmed al-Shara captured Damascus in December, after 13 years of civil war, Israel reacted preemptively, launching waves of airstrikes that destroyed Syrian military capabilities and prevented them from falling into potentially hostile hands.
The IDF also sent ground troops to occupy 235 square kilometers of the UN-supervised demilitarized zone, stating that they would remain there "indefinitely," with incursions deeper into Syrian territory.
Netanyahu even went so far as to declare that an additional 50 kilometers of southern Syria, all the way to the suburbs of Damascus, should be part of a demilitarized “zone of influence.”
Israeli jets also attacked several Syrian air bases further inland this month, amid concerns that they could be used by Turkish forces.
In Lebanon, the IDF has been shelling Hezbollah targets almost daily, despite a US-brokered ceasefire last November that ended a year-long war between the two sides.
Israel also maintained at least five “strategic” positions in southern Lebanon, building outposts on high ground across the border, opposite Israeli communities.
During a recent visit to Israel's northern border, Financial Times reporters saw an Israeli position inside Lebanon, on a hill near the Israeli village of Metula, held by a company of paratrooper reservists.
A local Israeli official argued that the outposts were crucial to ensuring the return of residents displaced by the war between Israel and Hezbollah. “The IDF must stay in (Lebanon) and remain aggressive,” the official added, expressing a view shared by much of the Israeli public.
Nearby, the Shiite Lebanese villages of Kfar Qila and Al-Khiyam, where officials said there was a Hezbollah military presence, lie in ruins.
"This is what victory looks like. The IDF is here, and the communities below are protected and functional," Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said during a tour of the area last month. "And the (Lebanese) villages on the other side have been razed to the ground."
The scene was reminiscent of Israel's "scorched earth" tactics against Palestinian militants. In the West Bank, the UN estimates that some 40.000 Palestinians have been displaced since Israel launched a major offensive against gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp in January, later expanding it to other nearby areas.
The Jenin camp has been almost completely emptied of its inhabitants, and large parts - including main roads, schools, mosques and dozens of buildings - have been destroyed.
The IDF has set up outposts inside Jenin, as well as in the Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps - which are nominally under Palestinian Authority control - to which it has deployed multiple battalions with the aim of clearing these areas and creating passageways for future operations.
Israeli officials say troops will remain there indefinitely, and Palestinian residents will not be allowed to return before the end of the year.
It represents a shift in strategy for Israel, which for two decades has carried out incursions into Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank but has avoided a long-term presence.
The IDF insists that the new outposts established in Syria, Lebanon and camps in the West Bank are “temporary” and can be removed in just a few days.
But what happens in Gaza will almost certainly be different. Since the beginning of the war, senior Israeli officials have made it clear that they intend to build a one-kilometer security zone inside the strip, to prevent an attack like the one of October 7 from ever happening again.
More than 18 months into the conflict, entire sections of the Palestinian enclave have been razed to the ground. "It looks like Mars," said an Israeli reservist in southern Gaza. "If a building is still standing, it probably means we're using it."
However, it appears that the Israeli plan is nowhere near the end - since the offensive resumed last month after an eight-week ceasefire, the IDF has further consolidated control over the territory.
Katz, the defense minister, threatened last month to expand those border “security zones” and place even more of Gaza under “permanent Israeli control” unless Hamas capitulates and releases Israeli hostages.
Netanyahu has never hidden his desire to maintain “total security control” over the enclave. He has also enthusiastically embraced US President Donald Trump’s proposal to expel the population from Gaza and turn the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Ehud Yari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Trump's support has helped keep international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories manageable, and that Israel will continue with this aggressive new strategy.
"This is what the famous (post-war) 'Day After' will look like on various fronts," he said.
While there has been almost no domestic criticism of the government's new security doctrine, one exception is retired IDF Major General Israel Tsiv, who wrote in Israeli media last week that the government is "politically in love with the idea of taking over" the territory.
He described the Israeli presence in Syria as "unnecessary" because it is "territory that is not ours," and warned that it could have negative consequences - similar to Israel's two-decade occupation of the "security zone" in Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, which contributed to the emergence of the Hezbollah insurgency and the deaths of more than 1.000 Israeli soldiers.
Current Israeli officials disagree, arguing that resistance to the IDF presence in those areas is precisely proof that it should stay. “Not all of Syria likes us,” said one military official on the summit of Mount Hermon. “It just gives us an even stronger reason to be here.”
Prepared by: A.Š.
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