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Israel’s defence minister told troops to fortify their position in newly seized Syrian territory, making plans to send in reinforcements and equipment despite UN demands that the country retreat immediately.
Since rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Sunday, Israeli ground forces have crossed from the occupied Golan Heights into and beyond a previously demilitarised buffer zone in Syria. An Israeli air campaign has also destroyed most of Syria’s air force and air defences, Israel’s military said on Friday.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said on Friday that he had instructed the military to prepare for winter and “set up appropriate facilities and make special preparations for the soldiers to remain on Mount Hermon” inside Syria.
The Israeli encroachment has been condemned internationally by Arab states from Egypt to Qatar, while the UN secretary-general on Thursday demanded that all parties end “all unauthorised presence in the area of separation”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told US national security adviser Jake Sullivan that Israel would remain in the buffer zone “until there is an effective force” to uphold a 1974 armistice agreement that paused a conflict between Syria and Israel.
The two countries have been formally at war since 1948, and Israel seized most of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.
Israel has also seized on the chaos to destroy much of what’s left of the Syrian armed forces, carrying out hundreds of air strikes and destroying in about 10 days what took Syria decades to build.
In the past week hundreds of Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of military assets, including Syria’s vast air defence network, at least five air force squadrons and a missile production facility, said the Israel Defense Forces.
It also destroyed 90 per cent of Syria’s “identified strategic surface-to-air missiles”, establishing uncontested superiority over Syrian airspace — which Israeli jets have had to navigate with care in assaults against Iran this year.
In Damascus on Friday, Syrians jubilant about the overthrow of Assad, their necks draped with green revolutionary flags, flooded the ancient Hamidiyeh market for prayers at the Umayyad Mosque.
After Syrians rose up against Assad in 2011, weekly prayers were launching pads for protests, and the regime’s snipers would position themselves nearby and start shooting when protesters chanted anti-government slogans.
No more. Mohammed al-Bashir, Syria’s new interim prime minister, gave a sermon on Friday, broadcast on loudspeakers, and condemned “the tyrant” Assad. “The light of liberation is shining,” he said.
The abrupt fall of Assad’s regime, which survived more than a decade of civil war only to collapse in a two-week rebel offensive, has prompted concern in the region that the ensuing chaos will allow neighbours including Turkey and Israel to further extend their influence within Syria’s borders and exacerbate the instability.
The US has also carried out at least 75 air strikes in recent days on Isis targets to dissuade the remnants of the group from trying to grab territory. The US keeps about 900 special forces troops in northeastern Syrian to support Kurdish fighters in battling the jihadi group.
While the US has backed Israel’s incursions into Syria, Turkey — which supported rebels who helped oust Assad — accused Israel of an “occupier mentality”.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken, who met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara on Thursday and foreign minister Hakan Fidan on Friday, said it remained “imperative to keep Isis down”.
Turkey, however, considers the US-backed Kurdish militants an extension of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), an armed organisation that has fought a four-decade insurgency against the Turkish state at the cost of more than 40,000 lives.
“Our priorities include ensuring stability in Syria as soon as possible, preventing terrorism from gaining ground and preventing Isis and the PKK from holding sway there,” said Fidan.
The two diplomats also discussed a potential ceasefire in Gaza. “What we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks are more encouraging signs” that a hostage and ceasefire agreement was possible, said Blinken.
Blinken added that he discussed with both Erdoğan and Fidan “the role Turkey can play in using its voice with Hamas to try to bring this to a conclusion”.
Erdoğan has been one of Hamas’s staunchest defenders, calling the group a “liberation movement”. Senior Hamas officials frequently visit Turkey, though the government has denied that they have relocated there permanently.
Relations between Turkey and Israel have deteriorated since Hamas’s October 7 attack last year and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza.
Cartography by Steven Bernard
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