Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israeli forces have seized a buffer zone in the Golan Heights established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria.
He spoke from an overlook near the border between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, after Syrian opposition forces tore through the country and dramatically ended President Bashar al-Assad’s rule on Sunday morning.
Netanyahu said the 50-year-old agreement had collapsed and that Syrian troops had abandoned their positions, necessitating the Israeli takeover as a “temporary defensive position.”
Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it. The international community, except for the United States, views it as occupied Syrian territory.
Satellite images analyzed by the Associated Press show that as early as September, Israel began construction of what could possibly be a new road right along the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria. The United Nations confirmed that Israeli troops entered the demilitarized zone during the work.
The United Nations maintains a peacekeeping force in the demilitarized zone called the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF, with around 1,100 peacekeepers from Fiji, India, Kazakhstan, Nepal, and Uruguay. After the 1973 Mideast war, the UN Secretary Council voted to create UNDOF to patrol a roughly 400 square kilometer (155 square mile) demilitarized zone and maintain the peace there.
