Defense Minister Israel Katz said Friday that he had ordered the military to prepare to stay atop the Syrian side of Mount Hermon during the coming winter months as Israel aims to prevent the border region from falling into the wrong hands following the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.
Katz’s announcement came as top diplomats of Turkey and the United States, which back warring rebel factions in Syria, met to discuss their joint effort to prevent Islamic State from resurging after Assad’s downfall, amid international efforts to gauge Syria’s new leadership.
Meanwhile, Damascus celebrated its first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster, with rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani calling on Syrians “to go to the streets to express their joy” at the “victory of the blessed revolution.” Thousands attended prayers at Damascus’s landmark Umayyad mosque.
Al-Golani, whose Islamist Hayat Tahrir a-Sham originated in Al-Qaeda and has since broken with it, has remained largely mum as Israel struck what remained of Assad’s military equipment and entered the Syrian buffer zone delineated in a 1974 agreement.
The area includes Syrian-controlled sections of the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon — Syria’s highest peak, which has long boasted a UN observation post at the summit.
The Foreign Ministry on Thursday pushed back on international criticism of the takeover, saying the move was a temporary measure to prevent the border region from falling into extremists’ hands.
In a statement Friday, Katz said that “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.”
Katz ordered the move during an assessment he held on Thursday with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and other top officers.
Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War in 1967. It held onto the territory during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and in 1981 annexed the area in a move since recognized by the United States.
An unverified video circulating on social media purported to show a man from the Druze village of Hader — in the Syrian buffer zone — asking to be annexed to the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.
In front of a large crowd, the man said Israel was the “lesser evil” facing the community — with the greater evil apparently being the Islamist rebels led by al-Golani.
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