Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli troops will remain in Syrian territory indefinitely, blurring the border with Israel's northern neighbor.

A dry mountain wind whipped through a cluster of Israeli flags at the entrance of a kibbutz in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, where the tranquility belies the tumultuous events unfolding nearby. Earlier this month,

Israeli military vehicles ride through Syria close to the ceasefire line between Syria and Israel, as seen from Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, on Dec. 15.

Israeli fighter jets have launched hundreds of airstrikes, while soldiers have seized a buffer zone and captured military posts in territory formerly under Syrian control.

Syria’s leadership isn’t the only aspect of the country to be changing as a result of this month’s toppling of longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad. The blurring of its borders is also underway — from Israel to the southwest and Turkey to the north.

Ankara's growing military presence in Syria has led to a diplomatic clash between former allies Israel and Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has supported Hamas, even hinting at some sort of armed intervention.

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.

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.

Israel said it had wiped out the vast majority of the Syrian military's assets, including huge chunks of its air-defense network.

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.

The goal, said Avi Dichter, an Israeli minister, “is to establish facts on the ground” as Islamist rebels seek to cement their rule over the fractured country.

Jolani, urged Israel to stop airstrikes after a bomb so powerful it reportedly measured on the Richter scale was dropped on Syria