Israel grabs land in Syria’s Golan Heights, warns villagers to stay home

Israeli forces also bomb weapons depots in southern Syria and the capital Damascus, Israeli media reports.

Published On 8 Dec 2024

Israel has “seized” territory in Syrian-controlled areas of the Golan Heights, as its military warned Syrians living in five villages close to the Israeli-occupied portion of the strategic area to “stay home”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he ordered Israeli forces to grab a buffer zone in the Golan Heights established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria, after a lightning advance by Syrian opposition forces ended Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

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Netanyahu said on Sunday that the decades-old agreement had collapsed and that Syrian soldiers had abandoned their positions, necessitating the Israeli takeover.

“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” he said.

Israel captured a portion of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war and annexed it. The international community, except for the United States, views it as illegally occupied Syrian territory.

After Netanyahu’s comments, the Israeli military issued an “urgent warning” to Syrians living in Ofaniya, Quneitra, al-Hamidiyah, Samdaniya al-Gharbiyya and al-Qahtaniyah – all close to the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights.

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“The fighting in your area is forcing the IDF [Israeli military] to act and we do not intend to harm you,” Colonel Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman, said on social media.

Agricultural areas in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights were declared closed military zones and some schools shifted to online classes in anticipation of unrest.

Syrians poured into the streets echoing with celebratory gunfire on Sunday after a stunning opposition advance reached the capital of Damascus, putting an end to the al-Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule but raising questions about the future of the country and the wider region.

Joyful crowds gathered in central squares in Damascus, waving the Syrian revolutionary flag in scenes that recalled the early days of the Arab Spring uprising, before a brutal crackdown and the rise of an armed uprising plunged the country into a nearly 14-year war.

Netanyahu hailed the removal of al-Assad on Sunday as an “historic day” that followed the blows delivered by Israel against al-Assad’s supporters Iran and Hezbollah in its recent war on Lebanon.

Speaking from the Lebanese-Syrian border, Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi said that Israel was taking advantage of al-Assad’s fall.

“What is happening is certainly to the benefit of the Israeli military, of the Israeli government,” Basravi said. “They are getting what they have said they have wanted all along: weaker neighbours, so that they can push their regional agenda.”