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Israel should not remain indefinitely in newly occupied areas of Syria, Israeli experts say, amid international condemnation of the country’s incursion into the occupied Golan Heights this week.
Despite Israeli pledges that the incursion was carried out in self-defence, fears have been raised, particularly in Arab states, that Israel might use the overthrow of the Assad regime as cover to rearrange truces that have governed the region for decades, or even to seize territory.
Israel sent troops into a demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights earlier this week after Syrian president Bashar Al Assad was removed from power on Sunday. The incursion was Israel's first in the area since the buffer zone was created in 1974.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Friday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Golan Heights. Mr Katz has asked his troops to prepare to remain on Mount Hermon, a strategic location overlooking Damascus, during winter, his office said on Friday.
"Overlooking the Syrian peak of Mount Hermon, which returned to Israeli control after 51 years," Mr Katz posted on X. "An exciting historical moment."
"Due to what is happening in Syria - there is enormous security importance to our holding on to the peak of Mount Hermon," his office quoted him as saying.
After Israel had taken control of the zone, and amid international condemnation, Mr Netanyahu had said the Golan Heights would be Israeli “for eternity”. However, he did not clarify whether he was referring solely to areas already occupied by Israel since 1967, or to the buffer zone as well.
In the latest official comments on the operation, Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi told troops on Saturday that Israel was "not intervening in what is happening in Syria".
"We have no intention of managing Syria. We are unequivocally intervening in what determines the security of Israeli citizens here, behind us in the communities of the Golan Heights, and we are doing that professionally and correctly," he said.
Israel’s military said it destroyed more than 90 per cent of Syria’s strategic surface-to-air missiles on Thursday, along with a host of other weaponry, in a “significant achievement for the Israeli Air Force's superiority in the region”.
"Hundreds of Israeli Air Force fighter jets and aircraft inflicted severe damage on Syria's most strategic weapons: fighter jets and helicopters, Scud missiles, UAVs [drones], cruise missiles, surface-to-sea precision-guided missiles, surface-to-air missiles, surface-to-surface missiles, radars, rockets, and more,” the military said.
The military said it also hit weapons manufacturing and storage sites, with a particular focus on chemical weapons infrastructure. The strikes appear to be continuing, with Syrian media reports suggesting more waves over the weekend.
The massive scale of the strikes has led some in Israel to argue for widespread strikes against arch enemy Iran, which installed sophisticated air defence systems in Syria that were a major risk for Israeli air operations against its archenemy. Former defence minister Yoav Gallant told The Washington Post on Saturday that Israel and the US have a "window to act against Iran", in particular to halt its nuclear programme. “There is no strategic defence around Tehran,” he said.
Despite the widespread calls in Israel to keep fighting, Arab states doubled down on condemnations of Israel's incursion into new areas of the Golan during a meeting in Aqaba on Saturday. A statement issued after the meeting of foreign ministers from Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar said Israel should withdraw entirely from the buffer zone.
Saudi Arabia earlier said the operation demonstrated Israel's “determination to sabotage Syria’s chances of restoring its security, stability and territorial integrity”. Egypt said it was a “violation of international law”.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged Israel to withdraw its troops and continue to uphold the 1974 agreement. France echoed Mr Guterres’s call, while Spain and close Israeli ally Germany urged restraint.
Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, and annexed the territory in 1981. Most countries still recognise Syrian sovereignty over the area, although the US under then-president Donald Trump recognised the Golan Heights as Israeli in 2019.
Israel’s military and leadership strongly deny any intention of occupying the buffer zone in the long-term, but some officials, including government ministers, made the case for a land grab after troops moved in.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, part of Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party, said Israel should “establish a new defensive frontier based on the 1974 disengagement line” and “renew its control of the peak of [Mount] Hermon”, a strategic point in the region.
About 60km from Damascus and on vital high ground, the Golan Heights has been the site of many battles throughout Israel’s history. Syria attempted to regain the area during the 1973 war, but was unsuccessful. The conflict paved the way for an armistice a year later, under which a UN observer force was stationed there.
Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at Israeli think tank INSS, told The National that she “truly [hopes] that Israel will respect Syrian territory after things stabilise”.
“For now I think [the incursion] is smart. We still bear the trauma of October 7 and I think no one in Israel feels comfortable leaving the border to violent militant groups that could direct their struggle at some point towards Israel,” she said.
“I tend to believe that Israel should respect diplomatic agreements that were made in the past … Once an alternative regime is established we’ll need to go back to the same agreement or discuss it with the new entity in Syria.”
Ms Valensi warned that a long-term troop presence in the area would place strain on Israel’s military as it continues to fight on other fronts.
Kobi Michal, a senior researcher at the Misgav Institute and INSS, said Israel can “assure military control” without necessarily having troops in the territory, by working with international allies and building relations with minority groups in Syria.
Tom Segev, an Israeli historian who has written about Israel’s capture of the Golan Heights in 1967, said that “it is always possible” that Israel will keep the territory, as history shows that “once we keep a piece of territory we don’t like to give it back”.
However, he added, the situation today differs significantly from 60 years ago.
“In 1967, taking the Golan was part of the euphoria resulting from the unbelievable victory. We thought that we were going to be exterminated and look what happened: we occupied half the Middle East,” he said.
Israel’s interests in the Golan Heights, Mr Segev said, have always been strategic – given its importance in defending Galilee, a large and fertile part of northern Israel – rather than historic or cultural. This, he said, makes it less likely that Israel will hold on to the area in the long term.
“It’s not a place where most Israelis feel sentimentally attached to. If they go there, they go for skiing on Mount Hermon.”
