Israel advances to protect its borders with Syria, and Trump calls Turkey a "key player in shaping the post-Assad political landscape."

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 potentially for the long term.

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.

The buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights was created by the U.N. after the 1973 Mideast war. A

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.

Israel dropped a bomb on Syria so powerful it ... The Israeli military declined to comment on the strikes. The US embassy in Damascus advised Americans to leave Syria, saying the security ...

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.

Leaf denied that her press conference in Damascus had been canceled for security ... died or were killed in custody since 2011. Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was considered the capital ... were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel and where they are currently banned from returning.

The military’s expanded perch on the peak of Mount Hermon, straddling the so-called disengagement zone, gives Israel clear sightlines to the Syrian capital, Damascus, 25 miles away. Israeli ...