Quneitra Governorate clashes (2012–2014)

The 2012–2014 Quneitra Governorate clashes began in early November 2012, when the Syrian Army began engaging with rebels in several towns and villages of the Quneitra Governorate. The clashes quickly intensified and spilled into the UN-supervised neutral demilitarized zone between Syrian controlled territory and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The fighting came to international attention when in March 2013, Syrian rebels took hostage 21 Filipino UN personnel, who had been a part of the UN Disengagement Observer Force in the neutral buffer zone between Syria and Israel. According to UN official they were taken hostage near Observation Post 58, which had sustained damage and was evacuated the previous weekend, following heavy combat in close proximity at Al Jamla. The UN personnel were later released with Jordanian mediation.

Israel was briefly involved in the fighting in several incidents, such as on 11 November 2012, when mortar shells from Syria landed near an Israeli military outpost in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, responding by firing "warning shots" into Syria. This accounted for the first direct cross-border incidents between the two countries since the Yom Kippur War nearly forty years prior. Other occasions of short cross-border fire exchanges followed in early 2013 and in March 2014, with several wounded Israeli soldiers reported in each incident and one Israeli civilian killed.

The clashes in the Governorate were eclipsed by the 2014 Quneitra offensive, launched by rebels on late August 2014, resulting in take-over of much of the governorate by mid-September.