Dec 16 (Reuters) – The Israeli government decided on Sunday to double its population on the occupied Golan Heights while saying threats from Syria remained despite the moderate tone of rebel leaders who ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
Israel captured most of the strategic plateau from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981.
After Assad fled Syria on Dec. 8, Israeli troops moved into a demilitarised zone inside Syria, including the Syrian side of strategic Mount Hermon, which overlooks Damascus, where its forces took over an abandoned Syrian military post.
Israel called the incursion a temporary measure to ensure border security.
Following is a quick guide to the hilly, 1,200-square-kilometre (460 square-mile) Golan Heights, a fertile and strategic plateau that overlooks Israel’s Galilee region as well as Lebanon, and borders Jordan.
WHY IS THE AREA CONTENTIOUS?
In 2019 then-President Donald Trump declared U.S. support for Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, but the annexation has not been recognised by most countries. Syria demands Israel withdraw but Israel refuses, citing security concerns.
Syria tried to regain the Golan in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, but was thwarted. Israel and Syria signed an armistice in 1974 and the Golan has been relatively quiet since.
In 2000 Israel and Syria held their highest-level talks over a possible return of the Golan and a peace agreement. But the negotiations collapsed and subsequent talks also failed.
Netanyahu said on Sunday that he spoke on Saturday with Trump, who returns to the White House on Jan. 20. The Israeli leader said his country had no interest in conflict with Syria.
WHY DOES ISRAEL WANT THE GOLAN?
Security. Israel said earlier in Syria’s more than decade-long civil war that it demonstrated the need to keep the plateau as a buffer zone between Israeli towns and the instability of its neighbour.
Israel’s government also voiced concern that Iran, a longtime ally of the Assad regime, was trying to cement its presence on Syria’s side of the border in order to launch attacks on Israel. Israel frequently bombed suspected Iranian military assets in Syria in the years before Assad’s fall.
Israel and Syria have both coveted the Golan’s water resources and naturally fertile soil.
WHO LIVES ON THE GOLAN?
Some 31,000 Israelis have settled there, said analyst Avraham Levine of the Alma Research and Education Center specialising in Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. Many work in farming, including vineyards, and tourism. The Golan is home to 24,000 Druze, an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam, Levine said.
Many of the Druze adherents in Syria were long loyal to the Assad regime. Many families have members on both sides of the demarcation line. After annexing the Golan, Israel gave the Druze the option of citizenship, but most rejected it and still identify as Syrian.
WHO CONTROLS THE SYRIAN SIDE OF THE GOLAN?
Before the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, there was an uneasy stand-off between Israeli and Syrian forces.
But in 2014 anti-government Islamist rebels overran Quneitra province on the Syrian side. The rebels forced Assad’s forces to withdraw and also turned on U.N. forces in the area, forcing them to pull back from some of their positions.
The area remained under rebel control until the summer of 2018, when Assad’s forces returned to the largely ruined city of Quneitra and the surrounding area following a Russian-backed offensive and a deal that allowed rebels to withdraw.
WHAT SEPARATES THE TWO SIDES ON THE GOLAN?
A United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) is stationed in camps and observation posts along the Golan, supported by military observers of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO).
Between the Israeli and Syrian armies is a 400-square-km (155-square-mile) “Area of Separation” – often called a demilitarised zone – in which the two countries’ armed forces are not permitted under the ceasefire arrangement.
The Separation of Forces Agreement of May 31, 1974, created an Alpha Line to the west of the area of separation, behind which Israeli military forces must remain, and a Bravo Line to the east behind which Syrian military forces must remain.
Extending 25 km (15 miles) beyond the “Area of Separation” on both sides is an “Area of Limitation” in which there are restrictions on the number of troops and number and kinds of weapons that both sides can have there.
There is one crossing point between the Israeli and Syrian sides, which until the Syrian civil war began was used mainly by United Nations forces, a limited number of Druze civilians and for the transport of agricultural produce.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE ASSAD’S OUSTER?
Netanyahu’s government unanimously approved a more than 40-million-shekel ($11 million) plan on Sunday to encourage demographic growth in the Golan.
It said Netanyahu submitted the plan to the government “in light of the war and the new front facing Syria, and out of a desire to double the population of the Golan”.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates condemned Israel’s decision, with the UAE – which normalised relations with Israel in 2020 – describing it as a “deliberate effort to expand the occupation”.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles and military infrastructure, it says, to prevent them from being used by rebel groups that drove Assad from power, some of which grew from movements linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said on Saturday that Israel was using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but he was not interested in engaging in new conflicts as his country focuses on rebuilding.
Sharaa – better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani – leads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that ousted Assad on Dec. 8, ending the family’s five-decade iron-fisted rule.
He said diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that “uncalculated military adventures” were not wanted.
Israel Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Sunday that the latest developments in Syria increased the threat to Israel, “despite the moderate image that the rebel leaders claim to present”.
(Reporting and writing by Howard Goller and Mark Heinrich, Editing by William Maclean)
