Germany urges Israel to ‘give up’ plans to expand settlements in annexed Golan

Germany on Monday called on the Israeli government to abandon its plan to double the population in the part of the Syrian Golan annexed by Israel. Stressing that “from the point of view of international law, this territory controlled by Israel belongs to Syria” , a spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry said that Berlin was calling on the Israeli government to abandon this project, which it approved on Sunday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan concerns the “demographic development of the localities of the Golan and (the town of) Katzrin (…) in light of the war and the new front in Syria and the desire to double the population Golan,” according to a statement from his office.

Berlin stressed that it is “very important that in this phase of political upheaval in Syria, all actors in the region take into account the territorial integrity of Syria, and not call it into question”

Germany “calls on all actors in the region to show restraint”, declared Christian Wagner, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a regular press conference, stressing that Syria, ravaged by more than ten years of war, “has been the toy of foreign powers for far too long.”

Around 30,000 Israeli citizens live in 34 localities in the Golan annexed by Israel, to which are added 23,000 Druze, a community whose religion comes from Islam, who mostly claim to be Syrian while having the status of residents in Israel.

Israel conquered part of the Golan, in southwest Syria, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, before annexing this territory in 1981. Only the United States, under the administration of Donald Trump, recognized this annexation in 2019.