December 15, 2024Reuters
par Howard Goals
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel on Sunday approved a plan to double its population in the occupied Golan Heights, but said threats from Syria remained despite the moderate tone of rebel leaders who ousted President Bashar al Assad a week ago.
“Strengthening the Golan means strengthening the State of Israel, and that is particularly important at this time. We will continue to hold on to it, make it flourish and settle in,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
Israel captured most of Syria’s strategic plateau in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981.
In 2019, then-US President Donald Trump said the United States supported Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, but the annexation was not recognized by most countries. Syria demands that Israel withdraw, which the latter refuses, citing security concerns. Several attempts at peace 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 rebel leaders claim to present,” Defense Minister Israel Katz told reporters. officials responsible for reviewing Israel’s defense budget, according to a statement.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the government had unanimously approved a plan worth more than 40 million shekels (10.6 million euros) to encourage population growth in the Golan.
The prime minister 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 are settled there, according to analyst Avraham Levine of the Alma Research and Education Center, which specializes in security issues on Israel’s northern border. Many of them work in agriculture, particularly vineyards, and in tourism.
The Golan is home to 24,000 Druze, an Arab minority who practice a variation of Islam, according to Avraham Levine. Most identify as Syrian.
AVOID “FURTHER CONFRONTATIONS”
Syria’s new de facto leader, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, said Saturday that Israel was using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but did not want to engage in new conflicts while his country focuses on its reconstruction.
Ahmed Hussein al Charaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al Golani, leads the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al Cham (HTC), which ousted Bashar al Assad from power last Sunday, ending five decades of undivided rule. the Assad family.
Israel has since settled in a demilitarized zone inside Syria, created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, including on the Syrian slope of Mount Hermon, which overlooks Damascus, where its forces took control of an abandoned Syrian military post.
Israel, which has said it has no intention of staying put and calls the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure aimed at ensuring border security, has also carried out hundreds of strikes on weapons stockpiles Syria’s strategies.
These strikes, according to Israel, aim to destroy strategic weapons and military infrastructure to prevent them from being used by the rebel groups who ousted Assad from power, some of whom come from movements linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
“Syria’s state of fatigue, after years of conflict and war, does not allow new confrontations. The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, without getting drawn into conflicts that could lead to further destruction,” Ahmed Hussein al Charaa said in an interview published on the website of Syria TV, a channel that sides with the rebels.
He also said that diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that “uncalculated military adventures” were not desired.
(French version Benjamin Mallet)
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