The Foreign Ministry of Saudi Arabia on Monday accused Israel of “sabotaging chances for Syria to reclaim its security, stability and its territorial integrity” by controlling territory in the Golan Heights after the fall of dictator Bashar Assad.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry called on the international community to condemn Israel’s actions as “continued violations of international law.” The Saudis insisted the entire Golan Heights should be seen as “occupied Syrian land.”
The Egyptian and Qatari foreign ministries condemned Israel in similar terms. Egypt accused Israel of “exploiting the power vacuum” created by the fall of Assad to seize Syrian territory “in violation of international law.” Qatar called the Israeli move a “dangerous development.”
The Saudis, Egyptians, and Qataris all called upon the United Nations to denounce Israel. The U.N. was, as usual, happy to oblige, castigating Israel on Monday for allegedly violating its 1974 “disengagement agreement” with Syria by occupying Syrian territory.
The territory in question is a demilitarized zone covering about 90 square miles, established at the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War in 1974. The war began when Egypt and Syria – then ruled by Bashar Assad’s equally brutal father Hafez al-Assad – launched a surprise attack against Israel on October 6, 1973, during both the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur and the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
The intense assault from Egypt and Syria did indeed take the Israelis by surprise and came close to triggering a larger global conflict when both the United States and Soviet Union became involved on opposite sides. Israel turned the tide with U.S. support after suffering heavy losses, eventually signing separate ceasefire agreements with the two attacking nations.
Israel’s postwar peacemaking with Egypt would prove much more successful than its tense relationship with Syria, necessitating the buffer zone that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared temporarily inoperative on Sunday.
Netanyahu argued that with the fall of the Assad regime, the 1974 Disengagement Agreement had “collapsed” and Israel could not assume the new insurgent rulers of Syria would respect the old treaty.
“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” he declared.
Netanyahu said the buffer zone seized by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was a “temporary defensive position” that would be necessary “until a suitable arrangement is found.”
“If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel,” he said.
Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon echoed these points in a letter to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) on Monday. Danon stressed that Israel was taking “limited and temporary measures” for its own safety, and had no interest in “intervening in the ongoing conflict between Syrian armed groups.”
“Our actions are solely focused on safeguarding our security,” Danon told the UNSC.
Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood said the U.S. government “has no reason to question” Israel’s explanation for temporarily occupying the Syrian buffer zone.
Israel said the U.N. peacekeeping force in the disengagement area, UNDOF, has already come under attack from unknown Syrian forces and required assistance from the IDF. The U.N. refused to confirm Israel’s claim of assistance, although it did confirm that UNDOF forces were attacked and looted in the buffer region.
Despite the fall of the regime they served, Syria’s ambassadors to the United Nations are still on the job and on Monday they asked UNSC to condemn the “Israeli attack.”
Israel has a few good reasons to be wary of Syria’s new rulers, beginning with the biography of insurgent leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Jolani, who served al-Qaeda before becoming leader of the splinter group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was born in the Golan Heights – the contentious strip of Syrian territory occupied by Israeli forces since Syria’s previous attempt to wipe out Israel, the Six-Day War of 1967.
Jolani is an enthusiast of Palestinian terrorism and an admirer of the 9/11 attack on the United States who did time in Abu Ghraib prison after crossing from Syria into Iraq to attack American troops. He returned to Syria to help establish al-Qaeda’s franchise in that country during the Syrian civil war, acting on the orders of a higher-ranking al-Qaeda leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Baghdadi later left al-Qaeda to form the Islamic State, which he led as its “caliph” until he was killed by a U.S. special forces operation under President Donald Trump in 2019. Jolani also broke with al-Qaeda, rebranding the Nusra Front as an independent group opposed to Bashar Assad’s rule. He later renamed his organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham “The Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.”
“The Levant” means the part of the Middle East along the eastern Mediterranean coast, which would include Israel.
Although he has been running a “charm offensive” to convince the international community he can manage Syria as a functional and tolerant Islamist nation, and he claims to be primarily occupied with hunting down members of the Assad regime, Ambassador Danon called Jolani a “bad guy” and said there was little reason to believe he has “changed all of a sudden.”
