NAHARIYA, Israel (AP) — The Israeli military was about to launch a nighttime strike on a group of men in southern Syria when the soldiers noticed the long curls dangling from the temples of their targets. The troops held their fire.

These were not Syrian militants attempting to breach Israel’s border but religious Jews who had slipped into Syria and were on their way back.

The episode, first reported last week by Israel’s public broadcaster and confirmed to The Associated Press by the Israeli military, has helped raise the profile of a fringe group of Israeli settlers that has staged numerous incursions into Syria, where they hope to establish Jewish settlements.

Israel’s military has occupied the area in southern Syria for more than a year, but the forays by civilian settler groups into the region only became a regular occurrence recently.

The groups, with members numbering in the dozens, have attempted to cross from Israel to Syria every few days in recent weeks. The military is tasked with reining them in and, while most Israelis regard them as fringe, the wider settlement movement in Israel has strong backers in the country’s far-right government.