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What Is the Significance of the Golan Heights?

Israeli military vehicles on their way into the Syrian side of the border, between Israel and Syria, near the Druze village of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 16 December 2024. (EPA)
Israeli military vehicles on their way into the Syrian side of the border, between Israel and Syria, near the Druze village of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 16 December 2024. (EPA)
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What Is the Significance of the Golan Heights?

Israeli military vehicles on their way into the Syrian side of the border, between Israel and Syria, near the Druze village of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 16 December 2024. (EPA)
Israeli military vehicles on their way into the Syrian side of the border, between Israel and Syria, near the Druze village of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 16 December 2024. (EPA)

The Israeli government decided on Sunday to double its population on the occupied Golan Heights while saying threats from Syria remained despite the moderate tone of opposition leaders who ousted President Bashar al-Assad. Israel captured most of the strategic plateau from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981.

After Assad fled Syria on Dec. 8, Israeli troops moved into a demilitarized zone inside Syria, including the Syrian side of strategic Mount Hermon, which overlooks Damascus, where its forces took over an abandoned Syrian military post.

Israel called the incursion a temporary measure to ensure border security.

Following is a quick guide to the hilly, 1,200-square-kilometre (460 square-mile) Golan Heights, a fertile and strategic plateau that overlooks Israel's Galilee region as well as Lebanon, and borders Jordan.

WHY IS THE AREA CONTENTIOUS?

In 2019 then-President Donald Trump declared US support for Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, but the annexation has not been recognized by most countries. Syria demands Israel withdraw but Israel refuses, citing security concerns.

Syria tried to regain the Golan in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, but was thwarted. Israel and Syria signed an armistice in 1974 and the Golan has been relatively quiet since.

In 2000 Israel and Syria held their highest-level talks over a possible return of the Golan and a peace agreement. But the negotiations collapsed and subsequent talks also failed.

Netanyahu said on Sunday that he spoke on Saturday with Trump, who returns to the White House on Jan. 20. The Israeli leader said his country had no interest in conflict with Syria.

WHY DOES ISRAEL WANT THE GOLAN?

Security. Israel said earlier in Syria's more than decade-long civil war that it demonstrated the need to keep the plateau as a buffer zone between Israeli towns and the instability of its neighbor.

Israel's government also voiced concern that Iran, a longtime ally of the Assad regime, was trying to cement its presence on Syria's side of the border in order to launch attacks on Israel. Israel frequently bombed suspected Iranian military assets in Syria in the years before Assad's fall.

Israel and Syria have both coveted the Golan's water resources and naturally fertile soil.

WHO LIVES ON THE GOLAN?

Some 31,000 Israelis have settled there, said analyst Avraham Levine of the Alma Research and Education Center specializing in Israel's security challenges on its northern border. Many work in farming, including vineyards, and tourism. The Golan is home to 24,000 Druze, an Arab minority, Levine said.

Many of the Druze adherents in Syria were long loyal to the Assad regime. Many families have members on both sides of the demarcation line. After annexing the Golan, Israel gave the Druze the option of citizenship, but most rejected it and still identify as Syrian.

WHO CONTROLS THE SYRIAN SIDE OF THE GOLAN?

Before the outbreak of Syria's civil war in 2011, there was an uneasy stand-off between Israeli and Syrian forces.

But in 2014 anti-government factions overran Quneitra province on the Syrian side. The fighters forced Assad's forces to withdraw and also turned on UN forces in the area, forcing them to pull back from some of their positions.

The area remained under opposition control until the summer of 2018, when Assad's forces returned to the largely ruined city of Quneitra and the surrounding area following a Russian-backed offensive and a deal that allowed the opposition to withdraw.

WHAT SEPARATES THE TWO SIDES ON THE GOLAN?

A United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) is stationed in camps and observation posts along the Golan, supported by military observers of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO).

Between the Israeli and Syrian armies is a 400-square-km (155-square-mile) "Area of Separation" - often called a demilitarized zone - in which the two countries' armed forces are not permitted under the ceasefire arrangement.

The Separation of Forces Agreement of May 31, 1974, created an Alpha Line to the west of the area of separation, behind which Israeli military forces must remain, and a Bravo Line to the east behind which Syrian military forces must remain.

Extending 25 km (15 miles) beyond the "Area of Separation" on both sides is an "Area of Limitation" in which there are restrictions on the number of troops and number and kinds of weapons that both sides can have there.

There is one crossing point between the Israeli and Syrian sides, which until the Syrian civil war began was used mainly by United Nations forces, a limited number of Druze civilians and for the transport of agricultural produce.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE ASSAD'S OUSTER?

Netanyahu's government unanimously approved a more than 40-million-shekel ($11 million) plan on Sunday to encourage demographic growth in the Golan.

It said Netanyahu submitted the plan to the government "in light of the war and the new front facing Syria, and out of a desire to double the population of the Golan".

Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates condemned Israel's decision, with the UAE - which normalized relations with Israel in 2020 - describing it as a "deliberate effort to expand the occupation".

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria's strategic weapons stockpiles and military infrastructure, it says, to prevent them from being used by opposition groups that drove Assad from power, some of which grew from movements linked to al-Qaeda.

Syria's de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said on Saturday that Israel was using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but he was not interested in engaging in new conflicts as his country focuses on rebuilding.

Sharaa - better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani - leads the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that ousted Assad on Dec. 8, ending the family's five-decade iron-fisted rule.

He said diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that "uncalculated military adventures" were not wanted.

Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Sunday that the latest developments in Syria increased the threat to Israel, "despite the moderate image that the rebel leaders claim to present".

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In Assad's Hometown, Few Shared in His Family's Fortune. They Hope they Won't Share in His Downfall

A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
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In Assad's Hometown, Few Shared in His Family's Fortune. They Hope they Won't Share in His Downfall

A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)

On the walls of the palatial mausoleum built to house the remains of former Syrian President Hafez Assad, vandals have sprayed variations of the phrase, “Damn your soul, Hafez.”
Nearly two weeks after the ouster of his son, Bashar Assad, people streamed in to take photos next to the burned-out hollow where the elder Assad’s grave used to be. It was torched by opposition fighters after a lightning offensive overthrew Assad's government, bringing more than a half-century rule by the Assad dynasty to an end, The Associated Press said.
The mausoleum's sprawling grounds — and the surrounding area, where the ousted president and other relatives had villas — were until recently off limits to residents of Qardaha, the former presidential dynasty's hometown in the mountains overlooking the coastal city of Latakia.
Nearby, Bashar Assad’s house was emptied by looters, who left the water taps running to flood it. At a villa belonging to three of his cousins, a father and his two young sons were removing pipes to sell the scrap metal. A gutted piano was tipped over on the floor.
While the Assads lived in luxury, most Qardaha residents — many, like Assad, members of the Alawite minority sect — survived on manual labor, low-level civil service jobs and farming to eke out a living. Many sent their sons to serve in the army, not out of loyalty to the government but because they had no other option.
“The situation was not what the rest of the Syrian society thought,” said Deeb Dayoub, an Alawite sheikh. “Everyone thought Qardaha was a city built on a marble rock and a square of aquamarine in every house," he said, referring to the trappings of wealth enjoyed by Assad's family.
In the city’s main street, a modest strip of small grocery stores and clothing shops, Ali Youssef, stood next to a coffee cart, gesturing with disdain. “This street is the best market and the best street in Qardaha and it’s full of potholes.”
Families resorted to eating bread dipped in oil and salt because they could not afford meat or vegetables, he said. Youssef said he dodged mandatory military service for two years, but eventually was forced to go.
“Our salary was 300,000 Syrian pounds,” a month, he said — just over $20. “We used to send it to our families to pay the rent or live and eat with it" while working jobs on the side to cover their own expenses.
"Very few people benefited from the former deposed regime,” Youssef said.
So far, residents said, the security forces made up of fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the main group in the coalition that unseated Assad, and which is now ruling the country — have been respectful toward them.
“The security situation is fine so far, it’s acceptable, no major issues,” said Mariam al-Ali, who was in the market with her daughter. “There were a few abuses ... but it was fixed.” She did not elaborate, but others said there had been scattered incidents of robberies and looting or threats and insults.
Al-Ali called Assad a “traitor,” but she remained circumspect about her Alawite community's position in the new Syria.
“The most important thing is that there should be no sectarianism, so there will be no more blood spilled,” she said.
Dayoub, the Alawite sheikh, described “a state of anticipation and caution among all citizens in this area, and in general among Alawites,” although he said fears have started to ease.
At the town’s municipal building, dozens of notables sat on bleachers discussing the country' s new reality and what they hoped to convey to the new leadership.
Much was centered around economic woes — retired public servants' salaries had not been paid, the price of fuel had risen, there was no public transportation in the area.
But others had larger concerns.
“We hope that in the next government or the new Syria, we will have rights and duties like any Syrian citizen — we are not asking for any more or less,” said Jaafar Ahmed, a doctoral student and community activist. “We don’t accept the curtailment of our rights because the regime was part of this component.”
Questions also loomed about the fate of the area's sons who had served in Assad's army.
Since the army's collapse in the face of the opposition advance, residents said several thousand young army recruits from Qardaha have gone missing. Some later turned up on lists of former soldiers being held at a detention center in Hama.
“These are young guys who are 22 or 23 and they never took part" in active combat, said Qais Ibrahim, whose nephews were among the missing. Over the past few years, active combat was largely frozen in the country's civil war. “We send our children to the army because we don’t have any other source of income.”
Um Jaafar, who gave only her nickname out of fear of reprisals, said the family had no information about the fate of her two sons, stationed with the army in Raqqa and Deir Ezzour, though one son's name later turned up on the list of those imprisoned in Hama.
“My children got the best grades in school, but I didn’t have the ability to send them to the university,” she said. “They went to the army just for a salary that was barely enough to cover their transportation costs.”
Syria's new authorities have set up “reconciliation centers” around the country where former soldiers can register, hand over their weapons and receive a “reconciliation ID” allowing them to move freely and safely in Syria for three months.
But Ahmed, the doctoral student, said he wants more. As the country attempts to unify and move on after nearly 14 years of civil war, he said, “We want either forgiveness for all or accountability for all.”
Ahmed acknowledged that during the war, “rural Latakia was responsible for some radical groups,” referring to pro-Assad militias accused of widespread abuses against civilians. But, he said, opposition groups also committed abuses.
“We hope that there will be either an open process of reconciliation ... or transitional justice in which all will be held accountable for their mistakes, from all parties," he said.
"We can’t talk about holding accountable one ... group but not another.”