The Israeli army plans on staying in southern Syria indefinitely and wants the area south of Damascus demilitarized, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
“Take note: we will not allow HTS forces or the new Syrian army to enter the area south of Damascus,” he said at a military graduation on Feb. 23, referring to the new Syrian government and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group that led the toppling of the Assad regime.
“We demand the complete demilitarization of southern Syria in the provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Suwayda from the forces of the new regime,” the prime minister said. “Likewise we will not tolerate any threat to the Druze community in southern Syria.”
The new Islamist Syrian government, on Feb. 24, at a national dialogue summit organized by its new rulers, condemned Israel’s presence in southern Syria and called for it to withdraw.
In his exclusion of military forces, Netanyahu did not refer to the newly formed Suwayda Military Council, a Druze self-defense force in southern Syria.
It is led by Tareq Al-Shuofi, a Druze military leader who was wanted by the Assad regime. With the blessing of the Druze spiritual leader in Suwayda, Sheikh Hikmal Al-Hijri, it has broad support in the community.
At the group’s launching ceremony on Feb. 24, Al-Shuofi said it would protect Druze communities and guard the border against arms smuggling and infiltration by terrorists, according to the Jerusalem Post.
He said the group aspires to remain under the Syrian national framework and, in due course, join the new national army. He called for “modern, equal citizenship and human rights (granting a) democratic, secular, decentralized Syrian state, a state of justice and regional and global peace.”
Israel has had good relations with its Druze minority including with those living in the Golan Heights. Some Druze residents of southern Syria welcomed Israel’s quick securing of the 155-square-mile buffer zone between Israel and Syria after the fall of the Assad regime on Dec. 8, 2024.
The Druze in southern Syria fear religious extremists and worry that HTS, once tied to the Al Qaeda terrorist group and then the ISIS terrorist group, is still controlled by Sunni Islamists, Moran Levanoni, an expert on Syria and Lebanon, told the Jerusalem Post.
“They look at the appointments to the interim government, and all they see are Sunni religious men from the same background,” he said. “There are no Kurds, Alawites, or Druze or even Sunni secularists.”
Levanoni said he believes the Druze are trying to follow the same path as the Kurds, who have so far maintained military autonomy in Syria’s northeast and are pressing Syria’s new leader, Ahmad al-Shaara, for a federal structure and decentralized government.
Israel has already said it would remain on what used to be the Syrian half of Mt. Hermon indefinitely, as well as in the buffer zone, to keep hostile forces out of them. That zone, with U.N. peacekeepers, remained in place for 50 years after a 1974 cease-fire agreement.
Israel already controlled the southern half of Mt. Hermon, but the northern Syrian half was higher and offered dominating military positions.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli army has built two posts on Mt. Hermon and seven more in the buffer zone.
The mostly abandoned town of Quneitra is on the border, and the buffer zone extends east beyond it. The Quneitra province is significantly larger than the buffer zone, plus Netanyahu has called for demilitarizing two more provinces to the east of it.
Netanyahu’s government is under pressure to protect its communities near the Syrian frontier.
It also seeks to strengthen ties with friendly populations in the area, notably the Druze, Katz said.
Israeli forces “will not allow hostile forces to establish themselves and be present in the security zone in southern Syria from here to Damascus,” Katz said. “And we will act against any threat.”
