On a cold February night in Quneitra, a United Nations-monitored demilitarised zone between Syria and Israel, retired teacher Salah al-Sayed surveyed the barren remains of his once-lush plot, searching for a tree he could burn for warmth.
Last year, he had begrudgingly cut down a mulberry tree to fuel the stove that keeps his grandchildren warm. Despite the emotional toll it took on him, he believed that felling the tree was his only option to keep himself warm, and it was better than “waiting for the Israeli army to uproot it”.
"That tree wasn’t just a tree,” he tells TRT World.
“It was a refuge for birds. Neighbours gathered under its shade every day for coffee and conversation. Schoolchildren stopped to rest beneath it, plucking its fruit on their way to and from school. And now, it’s gone."
He is not facing this dilemma alone.
Since 2014, Syria’s economic freefall – triggered by currency collapse, oil sector sanctions, and the civil war under now-deposed Bashar al Assad’s despotic rule – forced many to resurrect archaic heating methods.
Moreover, Israeli military advances into Quneitra, following Assad’s fall in late 2024, have worsened the crisis.
According to Ahmad Deeb, director of forestry in Quneitra, Israeli forces uprooted “nearly 200 acres of trees from the historic Jabaatha Nature Reserve,” which sits on the southern slope of Mount Hermon.
“The forest, spanning 133 hectares, was home to 150-year-old oak, pine, cedar, wild plum, and almond trees. In its place, the Israeli military established a new base,” he tells TRT World.
The warning signs of an impending environmental disaster due to this Israeli assault are more apparent than ever.
"The deliberate decimation of forestland will accelerate soil erosion. Without tree roots to anchor it, the earth will wash away under seasonal rains, exposing the bedrock beneath," says Ahmad Deeb, Quneitra’s forestry director.
Beyond the immediate environmental damage, the long-term consequences are equally alarming.
The loss of forest cover contributes to climate change, as trees that once absorbed carbon dioxide are gone, leaving the greenhouse gas to accumulate in the atmosphere.
This will inevitably take a toll on public health, particularly respiratory illnesses, Deeb tells TRT World.
But the environmental cost does not end there.
The encroachment on Quneitra’s woodlands also threatens biodiversity. The Jabaatha Nature Reserve, long a sanctuary for rare plant species and microorganisms, is home to a wide variety of wildlife now facing extinction, including hyenas, wild hares, partridges, sparrowhawks, and thrushes.
The final blow
Israeli forces also expanded their assault into the central sector of the UN buffer zone, where they razed the Kudna forest, a 460-acre woodland of stone pine, wild almond, cypress, and eucalyptus.
“They also cleared a 250-acre stretch along the main road to the governor’s headquarters, stripping the landscape of its towering cypress and eucalyptus trees,” Deeb says.
“The villages of Hamidiyah, Samdaniyah, and Rafid also saw large swaths of their forests destroyed.”
According to Waged Meryoud, mayor of Jabaatha, Israel seeks elevated terrain for military bases as “the dense woodlands obstruct visibility, making deforestation a necessity for occupation forces”.
The Israeli authorities also seized agricultural lands, barring farmers from accessing them.
Ahmad al-Hajj, an English teacher from Jabaatha, has been forbidden from cultivating his 10-acre farm, once planted with stone pine. Many others share his fate, unable to tend to their land.
For years, residents have been complaining about the shrinking forests and olive groves. The need for warmth has stripped bare the iconic Jubata al-Khashab reserve, where 40 perennial oak trees were felled in a single raid in 2023, leaving the reserve’s 133 hectares of oak, hawthorn, and wild plum trees, once a tourist draw, a patchy scrubland.
The war and the economic hardships worsened the situation. Around half of Quneitra’s 135,000 residents now rely on firewood, says Deeb, the director of forestry in Quneitra.
More than a decade of infighting has drastically reduced the region’s forest cover.
Quneitra, according to Syrian environmental expert Abdel Hamid Karim, shares the Golan Heights’ diverse climate and rich vegetation. But as fuel prices soared, desperate residents turned to cutting trees, violating the sanctity of the forests.
“We formed a local committee to protect the woodlands,” says Adnan Layla, head of the forestry post in the village of Tarangah.
“We pruned trees properly and distributed the trimmings for free to residents. It worked, until 2018, when reconciliation agreements were signed, and the Assad regime returned to power in southern Syria, bringing with it security checkpoints and soldiers.”
The region’s deforestation was not driven by fuel shortages alone.
According to Meryoud, the Assad regime had deliberately flooded the area with drugs, particularly Captagon pills, targeting unemployed youth and schoolchildren. The forests became a source of quick cash for those desperate to fuel their addiction.
“Young men would sneak out at night, cut down trees, and sell the wood,” he says. “Once, even a murder was committed over firewood, a crime unheard of in this village before drugs took hold.”
A smuggler who spoke to TRT World on condition of anonymity was one of those caught and fined a billion Syrian pounds for transporting wood, which he had bought, to his house for heating.
“But (what about) those who were cutting and selling for the drug trade?” he asks bitterly. “They were never held accountable.”
Livelihoods at stake
According to Meyroud, the forests were also once a vital escape for the local population and a destination for school trips and tourism. But since the outbreak of war and, more recently, the Israeli incursions, the region has lost all forms of tourism.
For many locals, this loss has been devastating. Residents who once earned a living by selling food, drinks, and handmade goods from small kiosks and roadside stalls inside the forests have lost their income.
What was once a thriving seasonal economy has vanished, leaving families without a crucial source of financial support.
“The loss also extends beyond the environment and tourism,” says Karim. “These lands were a treasure trove for pharmacy students, home to medicinal plants found nowhere else, some even unnamed in scientific literature.”
The area was also a sanctuary for rare plant species, genetic ancestors of modern fruit trees, and a refuge for wildlife on the brink of extinction.
Karim warned that as the civil war, economic collapse, and ongoing Israeli occupation tightened their grip on residents, Quneitra’s forests might soon exist only in memory.
Despite the large-scale destruction, officials recognise the urgent need for reforestation. However, the path to recovery is riddled with challenges.
According to Deeb, all previous restoration plans were shelved after the fall of the Assad regime. "We are waiting for new decisions," he says.
Interest, however, is growing in international cooperation.
Engineer Ahmad, a local environmental official, said the Ministry of Agriculture was exploring partnerships with international organisations. A tree-planting campaign, in collaboration with the White Helmets, was held on April 1.
Yet, some experts remain cautious.
Yasser Salama, a representative of the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, an Arab League-affiliated agricultural research organisation, warns that foreign investment in reforestation requires a stable environment, an indirect reference to the ongoing Israeli occupation.
However, he does not rule out the possibility of future cooperation.
“Restoring the forests is not just about planting trees; it requires a cultural shift towards environmental responsibility,” he says.
According to Ali Ibrahim, the director of Quneitra’s environmental department, the biggest challenge is public awareness.
“According to the data we have collected, only 20 percent of the population understands the importance of conservation,” he says. To address this, the department is partnering with elementary schools to educate young children about the environment.
“Syria already has one of the lowest forest cover rates in the Arab world, just 2.7 percent of its total land area. We rank 10th among Arab nations. If we don’t act now and stop deforestation, we may lose what little we have left.”
This article is published in collaboration with Egab.
