Germany prods Israel to abandon Golan Heights plan

Germany is urging Israel to abandon its plans to double the population living in the Golan Heights, adding to growing global condemnation of Israeli attempts to bolster its hold on the strategic plateau captured from Syria in 1967 and effectively annexed in a move recognized by the US but few others.

“It is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria and that Israel is therefore an occupying power,” foreign ministry spokesman Christian Wagner says.

Wagner adds that Berlin wants Israel “to abandon this plan.”

He also criticizes Israel’s stationing of troops in a buffer zone following Syria’s fall to an Islamist insurgent force and strikes carried out by the IDF targeting strategic military sites and weapons left behind by the regime, including chemical weapons.

“It is absolutely crucial now, in this phase of political upheaval in Syria, that all actors in the region take into account the territorial integrity of Syria and do not call it into question,” Wagner says.

Israel has an interest to ensure that the Assad regime’s weapons “do not fall into the wrong hands,” he admits, but adds that Germany is “now calling on all actors in the region to exercise restraint.”

“Syria has been a plaything of foreign powers for far too long,” he says.