ISLAMABAD: In flagrant violation of international law and in a show of relentless provocation, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led an atrocious genocide in Gaza claiming over 45,000 Palestinians lives, held a security briefing atop a key Syrian mountain inside the United Nations (UN)-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights that the country has occupied recently with the assistance of interestingly a non-state actor, the Syrian rebels.
According to AFP, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing the other day atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights that Israel seized this month, the defence minister said.
Netanyahu’s office said the meeting took place on the “Hermon ridge” and said the premier “reviewed the (army’s) deployment in the area and set guidelines for the future”.
In a video statement from the summit, the prime minister said Israeli troops would remain there “until another solution ensuring Israel’s security is found”.
The prime minister ordered Israeli troops to seize the buffer zone as longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad’s rule collapsed in Syria.
Violation of 1974 armistice
UN chief Antonio Guterres said the Israeli move was a violation of 1974 armistice which set up the zone to separate Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights following the previous year’s Arab-Israeli war.
Israel has framed the move as temporary and defensive, with Netanyahu saying it was in response to a “vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone”.
Israeli forces have also been operating in areas beyond the buffer zone in Syrian-controlled territory, the military has confirmed.
Possibility of prolonged presence
Katz told the meeting of the importance of “completing preparations… for the possibility of a prolonged presence”, the statement said.
He added that the summit of Mount Hermon, home to the world’s highest UN observation post at 2,814 metres (9,232 feet) above sea level, provided “observation and deterrence” against both Hezbollah in Lebanon and rebels in Damascus who “claim to present a moderate front but are affiliated with the most extreme Islamist factions”.
Israel first conquered the Golan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community as a whole.
