The Israeli government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that this step was necessary because a “new front” had opened on Israel's borders with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime into the hands of the Islamist-led opposition coalition.
Netanyahu has said he wants to double the population of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War and which is considered illegally occupied under international law.
Israeli forces moved into the buffer zone separating the Golan Heights from Syria in the days following Assad's departure, saying the change of control in Damascus meant that ceasefire arrangements had “collapsed.”
There are more than 30 Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights, which are inhabited by an estimated 20,000 people. These activities are considered illegal under international law, which Israel objects to.
The settlers live alongside about 20,000 Syrians, most of whom are Druze Arabs who did not flee when the area came under Israeli control.
Netanyahu said that Israel “will continue to cling to (the land), prosper and settle it.”
The announcement comes a day after Syria's new de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, criticized Israel over its ongoing strikes on military targets in the country, which have reportedly targeted military facilities.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented more than 450 Israeli air strikes in Syria since December 8, including 75 since Saturday evening.
Al-Sharaa – also known as Abu Muhammad al-Julani – said the strikes “crossed red lines” and threatened to escalate tensions in the region, but said Syria was not seeking conflict with any neighboring country.
Speaking to Syrian TV, which was seen as supportive of the opposition during the civil war, Al-Sharaa said that “the exhausting state of war in the country, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations,” Reuters reported.
The Israeli army did not comment on his statements, but previously said that the strikes were necessary to prevent weapons from falling “into the hands of extremists.”
President Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Russia and sought asylum when the Islamic Sharia group, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, led other rebel factions in a lightning attack on Damascus.
The factions continue to form a transitional government in Syria, headed in theory by Shara.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Saturday Washington made direct contacts with Hay'at Tahrir al-ShamWhich the United States and other Western governments still classify as a terrorist organization.
UN envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen said on Sunday that he hopes for a quick end to sanctions imposed on the country to help facilitate economic recovery.
“We hope to see a quick end to the sanctions so we can see a real mobilization around building Syria,” Pedersen said upon his arrival in Damascus to meet with the Syrian interim government and other officials.
Elsewhere, Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Guler said that Ankara is ready to provide military support to the new Syrian government.
“It is necessary to see what the new administration will do,” Guler said of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency and other Turkish media. “We believe it is necessary to give them a chance.”
