Following the 2024 Syrian opposition offensives, the resurgent Southern Front declared full control over the governorate (excluding Israeli-controlled areas).

Later, Israel advanced its troops into the buffer zone amid reports of artillery strikes on local villages.

Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers are thought to have lived there, as evidenced by the discovery of Levallois and Mousterian flint tools in the vicinity.

The site of the Conversion of Paul was traditionally identified with the small village of Kokab, north-east of Quneitra, on the road to Damascus.

"[10] During the first few days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Quneitra was briefly recaptured by the Syrian Army before it was repulsed in an Israeli counter-offensive.

[13]Wollner and Harel asked the Jewish National Fund to carry out the work, ostensibly to prepare an area for agricultural cultivation, but were refused as they did not have permission from the Israeli army.

They then approached the Assistant to the Head of Northern Command and asked him to mark on a map which buildings the army needed.

"[18] Le Monde's Syria correspondent, in a report for The Times, gave a detailed eyewitness description of the destruction: Today the city is unrecognisable.

Everywhere there are fragments of furniture, discarded kitchen utensils, Hebrew newspapers dating from the first week of June; here a ripped-up mattress, there the springs of an old sofa.

[22][23][24] The Times' correspondent saw the city for himself on 6 May, a month before the Israeli withdrawal, and described it as being "in ruins and deserted after seven years of war and dereliction.

It looks like a wild west city struck by an earthquake and if the Syrians get it back they will face a major feat of reconstruction.

According to The Times' correspondent Edward Mortimer, "viewers were thus afforded a panoramic view of the city, which had stood almost completely empty since the Syrian army evacuated it in 1967.

Most of those destroyed did not present the jagged outline and random heaps of rubble usually produced by artillery or aerial bombardment.

The roofs lay flat on the ground, 'pancaked' in a manner which I am told can only be achieved by systematic dynamiting of the support walls inside."

[27] His report concluded that Israeli forces had deliberately destroyed the city prior to their withdrawal, including almost 4,000 buildings and a large amount of infrastructure, of value estimated at 463 million Syrian pounds.

It passed a resolution on 29 November 1974 describing the destruction of Quneitra as "a grave breach of the [Fourth] Geneva Convention" and "condemn[ing] Israel for such acts," by a margin of 93 votes to 8, with 74 abstentions.

During the Syrian Civil War, by the autumn of 2014, most of the portions of the governorate that are not held by Israel, were captured by various opposition and jihadist forces, with only a small enclave remaining under pro-Ba'athist militias in the north.

In August 2018, Russia deployed its military police force to man several posts along the Bravo line of the buffer zone on the Golan Heights.

[30][31] In early December 2024, the Southern Front which sprang up again following the offensives in the north, announced full control over Quneitra Governorate (the areas not under Israeli occupation).

[32][33] After the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, Israel launched an invasion into the governorate, advancing into the UNDOF buffer zone with claims of Israeli artillery strikes on local villages.

[40] A cease-fire line was established and large parts of the region came under Israeli military control, including the town of Quneitra, about 139 villages and 61 farms.