Israel has ordered troops to prepare to remain throughout winter on Mount Hermon — a strategic peak inside a buffer zone that has existed for decades with Syria but which Israeli forces have seized in the wake of the Assad regime’s collapse.
“Due to what is happening in Syria, there is a huge security importance to our holding of the Hermon peak and everything must be done to ensure the IDF’s preparations in the area, to allow the troops to stay there in the difficult weather conditions,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement carried widely by Israeli media and the AFP news agency.
Israel has said its deployment to the buffer zone was temporary, but concerns have grown over what United Nations chief António Guterres on Thursday called “extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” as he urged Israeli forces to withdraw from the buffer zone.
On Friday, Katz shared a photo on X that he said showed him with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overlooking the Syrian peak of Mount Hermon with binoculars, saying the site had “returned to Israeli control after 51 years.”
“An exciting historical moment,” he wrote.
In his warning, Guterres called for urgent de-escalation “on all fronts, throughout Syria” as he expressed particular concern over hundreds of Israeli strikes on locations across Syria in recent days following the toppling of the Assad regime, which crowds gathered in Damascus to celebrate Friday.
