Israeli PM: Israel will keep seized Syrian territories
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that Israel will maintain a presence in southern Syrian territories that were seized following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, according to the Middle East Eye via Haaretz on December 7th.
At a meeting with Israeli ambassadors, Netanyahu said, “We very much hope that we will be able to reach a demilitarisation agreement for southern Syria and also take care of our Druze brothers.”
He added, “But we want to keep these assets,” referring to the buffer zone seized by Israel following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government on December 8th, 2024.
The UN-patrolled buffer zone once divided Israeli and Syrian forces in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but the area was seized by Israeli forces.
It was reported on November 12th that Syria’s President, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was urging Israel to respect his nation’s pre-December 8th borders by withdrawing Israeli forces from southern Syria.
On December 2nd, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel withdraw its forces from southern Syria’s Golan Heights, which was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel has continually sought to expand its territory beyond the borders established in 1967, an initiative sometimes referred to as the “Greater Israel” plan.
Netanyahu announced in August that he was on a “historic and spiritual mission” in pursuit of a Greater Israel, which would see Israel’s borders expand to encompass the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, along with parts of Jordan and Syria.
An estimated 25,000 Israelis live in settlement outposts established in the Golan Heights, a number which some Israelis hope to expand through the establishment and expansion of more Jewish-only settlements in the area, which was formally annexed by Israel in 1981.
Under international law, Israel’s territorial expansion and establishment of new settlement outposts are widely recognised as illegal. It is estimated that more than 700,000 Israelis live in roughly 160 illegal settlements throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel occupies two-thirds of the Golan Heights, where the majority of residents have refused Israeli citizenship, with only 20% accepting the offer since 2018.
Aside from the Israeli settlers, the Golan Heights’ population consists of over 20,000 Druze, which is an Arab esoteric ethnoreligious group that has faced challenges with integration as a minority community in Syria.
Middle East Eye via Haaretz, Maghrebi.org
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