On Sunday, December 8, just a few hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the Israeli Prime Minister announced that he had ordered his army to “take control” of the Golan. A “limited and temporary” measure taken for security reasons, its Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar said on Monday.
“Today, everyone understands the crucial importance of our presence on the Golan, and not at the foot of the Golan,” Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference in Jerusalem. “Our control over the Golan Heights guarantees our security, it guarantees our sovereignty,” he told journalists. In southern Syria, “Tel Aviv is already advancing its pawns to ensure its interests and prevent a potential threat, one year after the collective trauma of October 7”, factual analysis of the Lebanese daily newspaper The Orient-The Day.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), Israel launched dozens of intensive airstrikes on Syrian military sites, “deliberately destroying weapons and ammunition depots.” “It is important, however, to emphasize that Israel is not intervening in the ongoing conflict between Syrian armed groups; our actions are solely focused on maintaining our security,” justified Monday in a letter addressed to the Security Council of UN Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon.
“Guarantee security”
The Israeli army said on Sunday that it had deployed in “several key points” in order to “defend and ensure the security of the Golan Heights communities and Israeli citizens”. Israeli officials on Monday defended the incursion “as having a limited scope, aimed at preventing rebels [syriens] or other local militias to use abandoned Syrian military equipment to target Israel or the Golan Heights,” reports The Washington Post.
According to the American daily, new soldiers were visible Monday outside the Druze village of Majdal Shams, near the Israeli-Syrian border, and were preparing to cross to the Syrian side. “While the Damascus regime has always wanted to recover the Golan Heights, Israel wants to try to anticipate the positions of the Syrian rebels”, analyzes the Belgian daily newspaper The evening.
Illegal annexation
Israel conquered part of this mountainous plateau from Syria during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. In 1973, the Jewish state repelled a Syrian attack aimed at recovering it, before annexing it in 1981. Several voices spoke out yesterday to denounce the advance of Israeli troops in this area. “This aggression is a flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations,” criticized the spokesperson for Iranian diplomacy, Esmaïl Baghaï, in a press release published Monday evening. Saudi Arabia also condemned on Monday the advance of Israeli troops in the buffer zone of the Syrian Golan, an operation which it said “sabotages” Syria’s chances of recovering its “territorial integrity”, while Turkey denounced this Israel’s “occupation mentality” on Tuesday.
The UN, for its part, pointed to “a violation” of the 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria. This Tuesday, the organization’s special envoy for Syria called for an end to Israeli strikes and movements in the country: “It is very worrying to see Israeli strikes and movements on Syrian territory. This must stop “It’s extremely important,” Geir Pedersen said at a press conference in Geneva.
As if nothing had happened, the Israeli Prime Minister declared on Monday “thank [son] friend, President-elect Donald Trump, for responding to [sa] calls for recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019”, in reference to the decision taken by Donald Trump during his first term (2017-2021) going against several UN resolutions.