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Israel's defense minister has asked troops to fortify their position in newly captured Syrian territory, making plans to send reinforcements and equipment despite a UN demand that the country withdraw immediately.
Since rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad's regime on Sunday, Israeli ground forces have crossed the occupied Golan Heights into a previously demilitarized buffer zone and beyond. Syria. The Israeli military said on Friday that an Israeli air campaign had also destroyed most of Syria's air force and air defenses.
Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz said on Friday that he had issued instructions to the army to prepare for the winter and “establish appropriate facilities and make special preparations for the soldiers to remain on Mount Hermon” inside Syria.
Arab countries condemned the Israeli violation internationally from Egypt to Qatar, while the UN Secretary-General on Thursday called on all parties to end “all unauthorized presence in the separation zone.”
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan this Israel It will remain in the buffer zone “until there is an effective force” to support the 1974 armistice agreement that halted the conflict between Syria and Israel.
The two countries have been officially at war since 1948, and Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.
Israel also took advantage of the chaos to destroy much of what remained of Syria's armed forces, carrying out hundreds of air strikes and destroying in about 10 days what had taken Syria decades to build.
The Israeli military said that last week, hundreds of Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace to destroy military assets worth billions of dollars, including Syria's extensive air defense network, at least five air force squadrons and a missile production facility.
It also destroyed 90 percent of Syria's “identified strategic surface-to-air missiles,” creating uncontested superiority over Syrian airspace — which Israeli aircraft have had to carefully navigate in attacks against Iran this year.
In Damascus on Friday, Syrians jubilant over Assad's ouster, their necks draped with Green Revolution flags, flooded the old Hamidiya market to pray at the Umayyad Mosque.
After Syrians rose up against Assad in 2011, weekly prayers served as launching pads for protests, and regime snipers would position themselves nearby and begin shooting when demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans.
no more. Mohammed al-Bashir, Syria's new interim prime minister, delivered a sermon on Friday, broadcast over loudspeakers, condemning the “tyrant” Assad. He added: “The light of liberation is shining.”
The sudden fall of the Assad regime, which survived more than a decade of civil war before collapsing in a two-week rebel offensive, raised fears in the region that the ensuing chaos would allow their neighbors, including Turkey and Israel, to expand their influence inside Syria. Syria's borders and worsening instability.
The United States has also carried out at least 75 airstrikes in recent days on ISIS targets to discourage the group's remnants from trying to seize territory. The United States maintains about 900 special forces soldiers in northeastern Syria to support Kurdish fighters in the fight against the jihadist group.
While the United States has supported Israeli incursions into Syria, Türkiye – which has supported the rebels who helped oust Assad – has accused Israel of an “occupier mentality.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday, said it remained “essential to keep ISIS under control.”
However, Turkey views US-backed Kurdish militants as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed organization that has fought a four-decade-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.
“Our priorities include ensuring stability in Syria as soon as possible, preventing terrorism from making gains on the ground, and preventing ISIS and the PKK from taking control there,” Fidan said.
The two diplomats also discussed a possible ceasefire in Gaza. “What we have seen in the past two weeks are more encouraging signs” that an agreement on hostages and a ceasefire can be reached, Blinken said.
Blinken added that he discussed with both Erdogan and Fidan “the role that Türkiye can play in using its voice with Hamas to try to reach an outcome.”
Erdogan was one of Hamas's strongest defenders, describing the movement as a “liberation movement.” Senior Hamas officials visit Türkiye frequently, although the government denies that they have moved there permanently.
Relations between Türkiye and Israel have deteriorated since the Hamas attack on October 7 last year and the subsequent Israeli bombing of Gaza.
Cartography by Stephen Bernard
