Katz says IDF troops will stay atop Syrian side of Mount Hermon during winter months
As Syrians celebrate first Friday since Assad’s downfall, US and Turkey agree to keep ensuring Islamic State won’t ‘rear its head again,’ amid international gestures to rebel leader
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.
The Druze of Mt. Hermon have officially requested to be annexed to Israel. pic.twitter.com/X6qTnZXhzP
— Mira ⛥ (@MiraMedusa) December 13, 2024
Blinken and Fidan discuss Islamic State, rival allies in Syria
At a meeting in Ankara Friday, meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan the two countries’ “imperative” to continue yearslong work “to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of ISIS [and] to ensure that threat doesn’t rear its head again,” according to a statement from Washington.
ISIS, or Islamic State, controlled up to a third of Syria, mainly in the northeast, in a reign of terror that was defeated in 2019 by a coalition including the US and Turkey.
Fidan said he discussed with Blinken Turkey’s aim “to prevent terrorism from gaining ground [in Syria] and to prevent Islamic State and the PKK from dominating there,” referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is considered a terror group by both Ankara and Washington.
NATO allies Washington and Ankara supported Syrian rebels during the 13-year civil war, but their interests clashed when it came to one of the rebel factions — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
The SDF is the main ally in the international coalition against the Islamic State. It is spearheaded by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara sees as an extension of PKK, whose activists have fought for independence against Turkey for the past 40 years.
Earlier this week, Turkish-backed forces seized the northern city of Manbij from the SDF, which then headed east of the Euphrates River.
A Syrian opposition source told Reuters that the US and Turkey had reached an agreement on the withdrawal. Neither Blinken nor Fidan made any reference to any agreement between Turkey-backed Syrian forces and the SDF.
Blinken, whose term will end in January, is in Turkey on his 12th trip to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. As part of his meeting with Fidan on Friday, Blinken also discussed efforts to bring home the remaining 100 hostages.
On Thursday, Blinken also met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and said that there was broad agreement on what Turkey and the US would like to see in Syria after Assad’s fall.
The meeting with Erdogan came amid news that Ankara would reopen its embassy in Damascus, as regional powers began to adapt to the new reality there.
According to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, Burhan Koroglu, the Turkish ambassador in Mauritania, was named as temporary charge d’affaires to lead the reopening.
The embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security problems during the Syrian civil war and embassy staff and their families were recalled to Turkey.
On Thursday, Jordan’s foreign ministry said it would host a summit “to discuss developments in Syria,” with the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Turkey, as well as their US and EU counterparts and the UN envoy for Syria.
Bahrain’s King Hamad said in a letter to the rebel leader al-Golani — whom he addressed by his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa — that Bahrain was ready to “continue consultations and coordination with Syria,” Bahrain’s official BNA news agency reported Friday.
