Since the Assad regime imploded less than two weeks ago, 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 between the foes potentially for the long term.

Does Israel's seizure of Syrian territory serve temporary security goals? Or is it a permanent land grab that might thwart future friendly ties with Syria's new rulers and diplomatic relations with other Arab countries?

Israel’s PM claimed credit Sunday for the events leading to the downfall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad — and used the moment to boost the Jewish state’s security by bombing terror sites in

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

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.

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.

A Syrian security source said Israeli troops reached Qatana, which is six miles into Syrian territory east of a demilitarised zone separating Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria.

Israel has seized land along its border with Syria and carried out air strikes on Damascus. Benjamin Netanyahu said IDF troops had captured a buffer zone in the Golan Heights on the same day a lightning rebel offensive toppled the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

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.

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.

Even as Israeli jets bombed weapons sites, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered "a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria."

Israel has paved the way for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear programme by eliminating swathes of Syria’s military infrastructure, according to officials speaking to The Telegraph following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.