In a video published on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told viewers his country had “no interest in a conflict with Syria”. On the same day, his government approved a plan that includes doubling the Israeli population in the portion of Syria’s Golan Heights that Israel annexed illegally in 1981. How Mr Netanyahu believes the impossible – that continued annexation and more illegal settlements can somehow go hand in hand with peace – is a mystery to all but the Prime Minister and his supporters.
This plan, announced shortly after senior officials from the Arab world and other leading nations meeting in Aqaba expressed their support for Syria’s territorial integrity, has been rejected by those in the region who want peace to prevail. The UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned Sunday’s announcement, calling it “a deliberate effort to expand the occupation and is in violation and contravention of international law”.
The Golan has been occupied by Israel’s military since 1967 and Israel unilaterally annexed it, in defiance of international law, in 1981. It is now home to around 20,000 Israelis. An equal number of Syrian citizens, mainly from the Druze community, remain there, leading lives necessarily defined by pragmatism. While some of them have accepted Israeli citizenship, many have not. Nonetheless, to continue living on their ancestral lands they must engage with Israel’s labour market and health sector, while maintaining ties with their kin in Syria and working to avoid accusations of being sympathetic to Israel. Israel’s zeal for settlement, as seen in the West Bank and proposed for war-torn Gaza, puts this community under further pressure.
But Israel’s plan to expand and entrench its occupation of Syrian land also presents a problem for the emergent leadership in the political vacuum of post-Assad Damascus. Israeli air strikes have destroyed a great deal of Syria’s military infrastructure and Israeli troops have moved further into the Golan by taking up strategic positions – including on Syria’s tallest mountain – in a demilitarised buffer zone abandoned by the Syrian army.
To have foreign troops within artillery range of the capital poses an existential problem for the administration taking shape in Syria. Although Hayat Tahrir Al Sham leader Ahmad Al Shara has said his war-weary nation has no appetite for a new confrontation with Israel, many of his compatriots will be angered by the threat of Israel’s settlement plan that takes advantage of the Syria’s current instability.
Actions speak lounder than words. In this case, Israel’s protestations that it wants to live in harmony with Syria are undermined not only by the recent seizure of more land but by this latest plan to consolidate its presence in annexed areas further. Just as its seizure and settlement of Palestinian territory after 1967 has meant that Israel would live in a state of near-permanent conflict, attempting to put down roots on Syrian land all but guarantees conflict with Damascus for years to come. Just as there is a need for a ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution with Palestine, it is time for Israel to forge a new future with Syria based on respecting international law and the sovereignty of other states.
