Displaced Syrians return to border area with Israel

Hundreds of Syrians displaced by fighting near the border with Israel returned to their homes yesterday, after government forces retook the territory from rebels, according to state media and a monitoring group.Syria’s news agency Sana reported that residents, who had earlier left the town of Al-Hamidiyeh in the south-western province of Quneitra, returned to their homes and farms, which had been destroyed by “terrorists,” a term used by the Syrian government to refer to opposition rebels.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, confirmed the return of hundreds of locals to Al-Hamidiyeh and nearby villages.This month, UN peacekeepers returned to a demilitarised buffer zone on the border between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for the first time in six years, after government forces, supported by Syria’s ally, Russia, retook control of Quneitra.The peacekeepers had patrolled the area since 1974, when the buffer zone between the two countries was created after the Arab-Israeli War of 1973.However, they stopped patrolling the zone in 2012, when rebels seized it as Syria’s conflict heated up.On Tuesday, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said Russia would prevent the Syrian military from entering the zone.Israel has been increasingly concerned that the Syrian army, along with its Iranian-backed allies, will enter the area.In recent months, forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have regained ground from Western-backed rebels and militants, including the Islamic State militia, in different parts of the war-torn country.The United Nations said yesterday that seven years of relentless conflict in Syria have wreaked destruction that had cost the country close to a whopping $400bn.The figure was released after a two-day meeting of more than 50 Syrian and international experts in neighbouring Lebanon, hosted by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).ESCWA said the “volume of destruction in physical capital and its sectoral distribution” had been estimated at more than $388bn.It said the figure did not include “human losses resulting from deaths or the loss of human competences and skilled labour due to displacement, which were considered the most important enablers of the Syrian economy.”More than half of Syria’s pre-war population has fled the country or been displaced internally over the past seven years.Russia’s 2015 military intervention helped a spectacular recovery by government forces, which have regained significant ground in recent months.Rebel forces remain in some pockets, but with the military balance hugely in the regime’s favour, efforts have already been shifting toward reconstruction.ESCWA said a full report on the impact of the war was due out in September and that the updated estimates reached this week would help inform ongoing discussions on post-conflict Syria.