Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday, after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, that he had ordered the army to “take control” of the Golan buffer zone, in southwestern Syria, the edge with the part of this plateau occupied and annexed by Israel.
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The order was also given to take control of “adjacent strategic positions,” Mr. Netanyahu said from the northeast of the occupied Golan and an observation point overlooking the area.
Israel conquered part of the Golan from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 before annexing this territory in 1981. This annexation is not recognized by the UN. In 1974, a UN force was sent to a buffer zone to monitor a ceasefire.
This agreement with Syria “collapsed” after the rebels’ lightning offensive which ended half a century of rule by the Assad clan in Syria, Mr. Netanyahu said, adding that Israel “will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border.
The army had previously said in a statement that it had deployed in “several key points” in order to “defend and ensure the security of the Golan Heights communities and Israeli citizens”.
She added that she was “not intervening” in the events in Syria where a rebel coalition led by radical Islamists announced on Sunday the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
On Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) indicated that Syrian troops had withdrawn from their positions in the province of Qouneitra, which borders the annexed Golan Heights.
A spokesperson for the Blue Helmets stationed in the Golan then reported “unidentified armed individuals in the separation zone, around twenty of whom entered one of the mission’s positions in the northern part of the zone of separation. separation”.
The Israeli army announced that it had helped the UN force to “repel” an attack.
In 2014, the UNDOF – the United Nations force responsible for observing the disengagement deployed in the demilitarized zone of the Golan – had to abandon its positions in the Syrian part of the Golan, when rebel groups and jihadists from the former branch Syrian Al-Qaeda had seized the area.
The latter had gradually taken several areas of Qouneitra, including the passage between the Syrian part of the Golan and the part of the plateau occupied by Israel.
Forty-five Fijian UNDOF peacekeepers were taken hostage after fighting between the army and rebels before being released after two weeks.
On Sunday, the Israeli army indicated that classes in schools in four Druze communities in the northern Golan Heights would move online, and declared some agricultural areas a military zone.
