Israel plans to expand Golan settlements after fall of Assad

 

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Israel's government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a "new front" had opened up on Israel's border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance.

Netanyahu said he wanted to double the population of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered illegally occupied under international law.

Israeli forces moved into a buffer zone separating the Golan Heights from Syria in the days following Assad's departure, saying the change of control in Damascus meant ceasefire arrangements had "collapsed".

Despite the move, Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday evening that Israel has "no interest in a conflict with Syria".

"We will determine Israeli policy regarding Syria according to the reality on the ground," he said.

There are more than 30 Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights, which are home to an estimated 20,000 people. They are considered illegal under international law, which Israel disputes.

The settlers live alongside some 20,000 Syrians, most of them Druze Arabs who did not flee when the area came under Israeli control.

Netanyahu said Israel would "continue to hold on to [the territory], make it flourish and settle it".

The announcement comes a day after Syria's new de-facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa criticised Israel for its ongoing strikes on military targets in the country, which have reportedly targeted military facilities.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented more than 450 Israeli air strikes in Syria since 8 December, including 75 since Saturday evening.

Al-Sharaa - also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani - said the strikes "crossed red lines" and risked escalating tensions in the region, though he said Syria was not seeking a conflict with any neighbouring state.

Speaking to Syria TV, which was seen as pro-opposition during the civil war, al-Sharaa said the country's "war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations", Reuters reported.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented on his remarks, but previously said the strikes were necessary to stop weapons falling "into the hands of extremists".

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Ahmed al-Sharaa addressed a crowd inside the Umayyad Mosque, in Damascus, shortly after rebel fighters captured the Syrian capital on 8 December

President Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Russia and took up asylum when al-Sharaa's Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led other rebel factions in a lightning offensive on Damascus.

The groups are continuing to form a transitional government in Syria, of which al-Sharaa is the theoretical head.

On Saturday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had made direct contact with HTS, which the US and other Western governments still designates as a terrorist organisation.

United Nations' Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said on Sunday he hoped for a swift end to sanctions on the country to help facilitate an economic recovery.

"We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria," Pedersen said as he arrived in Damascus to meet Syria's caretaker government and other officials.

Elsewhere, Turkey's Defence Minister Yasar Guler said Ankara was ready to provide military support to Syria's new government.

"It is necessary to see what the new administration will do. We think it is necessary to give them a chance," Guler said of HTS, according to state news agency Anadolu and other Turkish media outlets.