An Israeli military vehicle rides by the ceasefire line between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, as seen from Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, December 15, 2024
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel agreed on Sunday (December 15, 2024) to double its population in the occupied Golan Heights while saying threats from Syria remained despite the moderate tone of rebel leaders who ousted President Bashar al-Assad a week ago.

“Strengthening the Golan is strengthening the State of Israel, and it is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold onto it, cause it to blossom, and settle in it,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

Israel captured most of the strategic plateau from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing it in 1981.

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. Various peace efforts have failed.

“The immediate risks to the country have not disappeared and the latest developments in Syria increase the strength of the threat — despite the moderate image that the rebel leaders claim to present,” Defence Minister Israel Katz told officials examining Israel’s defence budget, according to a statement.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the government unanimously approved a more than 40-million-shekel ($11 million) plan to encourage demographic growth in the Golan.

It said Mr. 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”.

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. Most identify as Syrian.

Avoiding ‘new confrontations’

Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said on Saturday (December 14, 2024) that Israel was using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but that he was not interested in engaging in new conflicts as his country focuses on rebuilding.

Mr. Sharaa – better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani – leads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that swept Assad from power last Sunday, ending the family’s five-decade iron-fisted rule.

Since then Israel has moved into a demilitarised zone inside Syria that was created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, including the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon that overlooks Damascus, where its forces took over an abandoned Syrian military post.

Israel, which has said that it does not intend to stay there and calls the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure to ensure border security, has also carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles.

It has said it is destroying strategic weapons and military infrastructure 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.

Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, have condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations. The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction,” Mr. Sharaa said in an interview published on the website of Syria TV, a channel that sides with the rebels.

He also said diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that “uncalculated military adventures” were not wanted.

Golan Heights has been occupied by Israel for almost 60 years. (File)

WASHINGTON:

US Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for Israel’s security is “ironclad,” her national security adviser Phil Gordon said on Sunday, adding that she has been briefed and is closely monitoring a rocket attack on a football ground in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

“The Vice President has been briefed and is closely monitoring Hezbollah’s horrific attack on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in northern Israel yesterday which killed a number of children and teenagers. She condemns this horrific attack and mourns for all those killed and wounded.

“Israel continues to face severe threats to its security, and the Vice President’s support for Israel’s security is ironclad,” Gordon said in a statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

People inspect the rubble of a house where a Hezbollah member and his family were killed in Israeli bombardment.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said on March 12 it launched more than 100 rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for a strike on the country’s east that killed one person the day before.

Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted in October, but several Israeli strikes have recently hit Hezbollah positions further north, raising fears of a full-blown conflict.

“Hezbollah launched “more than a hundred katyusha rockets” on Tuesday morning at two military bases in the occupied Golan Heights,” the group said in a statement. This was “in response to the Israeli attacks on our people, villages and cities, most recently near the city of Baalbek and the killing of a citizen”, it added.

On Monday, Israeli air strikes near Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek killed one person, in the second raid on the Hezbollah stronghold since cross-border hostilities began. The Israeli military confirmed its jets had hit two sites belonging to “Hezbollah’s aerial forces” in retaliation for strikes on the occupied Golan Heights over several days.

On February 26, Israeli strikes targeted Baalbek, some 100 km (60 miles) from the border, killing two Hezbollah members. Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah said its chief Hassan Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hayya, a leading member of Hamas’s political bureau.

They discussed ceasefire talks for the Gaza war, as well as attacks by Hamas’s regional allies to support its war efforts, the Hezbollah statement said. Nasrallah is due to give a televised speech on Wednesday. Hezbollah has repeatedly said it will only stop its attacks on Israel with a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant recently said any truce in Gaza would not change Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, by force or diplomacy.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, at least 317 people, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also 54 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in the cross-border hostilities.