In talks with the head of a U.N. observer force, Syria’s new government has urged for Israel’s withdrawal from Syrian territory, but Israel says it is staying indefinitely in at least one position.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said after visiting troops on top of Mount Hermon on Jan. 28 that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had no intention of vacating it.
Katz said Israel will not allow hostile forces to establish themselves in southern Syria.
Lacroix was set to meet observers from the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force, which monitors compliance with the 1974 disengagement accord. The United Nations considers Israel’s occupation of the buffer zone with the developments in the region as a violation of the deal.
Ahmad al-Sharaa, the rebel leader who led the overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime in December 2024, was named interim president of Syria on Jan. 29.
Israel had held the southern, lower part of the snow-capped Mount Hermon mountain cluster since the Six-Day War in 1967, while Syria held the higher ground on the north side.
Israel said its troops have taken positions inside the buffer zone, and some have ventured beyond it. At the time, it described the moves as temporary and limited to ensure Israel’s border security while Syria was in chaos. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “a vacuum on Israel’s border.”
The IDF also sought to destroy as much Syrian military hardware and as many bases as possible, conducting hundreds of airstrikes. This ensured that they could not be turned against Israel by radical forces in the future, as happened with the billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment abandoned in Afghanistan by the Biden administration in 2021 and seized by the Taliban.
Mount Hermon overlooks both the countryside south of Damascus, Syria, and the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in 1967. President Donald Trump recognized Israel’s annexation during his first term, but most nations and the United Nations have not. Israel’s half features not only military bases but also tourism sites such as a ski resort.
Katz, in December 2024, told IDF troops to prepare to remain in the buffer zone throughout the winter.
Al-Sharaa, who leads the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group, responded in December 2024 to Israel’s concerns, offering reassurances that the new government would not threaten Israel or allow Iran to reestablish itself in Syria.
Israeli strategic analysts, though, have said the jury is still out on whether al-Sharaa, a member of both ISIS and Al-Qaeda before adopting a more moderate posture a few years ago, will maintain that position or whether he will revert to the Islamist stance that had led Western powers to classify him as a terrorist.
The United States until last month maintained a $10 million bounty on al-Sharaa but canceled it last month after a U.S. delegation met with him in Damascus.