Let's look at how much land Israel is now occupying. (Most maps from Critical Threats.)
It is the little patch of blue next to the much larger Golan Heights.
Now let's zoom out and look at who is controlling all of Syria today.
You can hardly see the blue area.
But look at the light yellow areas in northern Syria.
Those are controlled by the "Syrian National Army." The SNA is a Turkish proxy - essentially, Turkey's "Hezbollah." It is funded by Turkey, armed by Turkey and all of its military decisions are made by Turkey.
Turkey controls 22 times the area Israel controls - 8,835 square kilometers.
And the Turkish presence is not only in the yellow sections. As of 2021, one think-tank counted 113 Turkish military bases and outposts in Syria: within 5 governorates: 55 in Aleppo, 43 in Idlib, 9 in Raqqa, 4 in Al-Hasaka and 2 in Lattakia.
Unlike the Russian and Iranian bases in Syria, the Turkish bases are in no danger of being taken over by the rebels.
This has been going on for many years, and there are probably fewer articles about Turkish occupation of vast parts of Syria in the past decade than on Israel taking over tiny parts of Syria in the past couple of days.
But that is not the only thing that Western media has been downplaying about these areas.
Turkey considers a 20-30 km wide swatch of Syrian territory along its borders to be a "safe zone" - which is a buffer zone that it controls or intends to control. And within that zone are illegal settlements.
You see, Turkey has been expelling hundreds of thousands of Kurds from these territories - building settlements, and forcibly populating them with Sunni Muslim Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey. They are changing the demography of the area with settlements that almost no one talks about.
Turkey's policy of occupation, ethnic cleansing and settlement enterprise in parts of Syria violates international law. Almost no one discusses this and European governments, fearful of Turkish reactions and threats to send millions of refugees their way, are reluctant to emphasize this - but no one outside Turkey disputes this.
How many Syrians has Israel displaced? From all accounts - zero.
Here is a great example where the main story is true - Israel did indeed take over 400 square kilometers of Syrian territory, as a temporary measure until there is a dependable government or other arrangements that can guarantee Israel's security. But when you compare that to the entire size of Syria and the amount of land controlled by other foreign nations, the real story turns out to be the one that everyone is ignoring.
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