Israeli Defense Minister: Israel wants to create a “sterile” zone in Syria

The Israeli Defense Minister said that his country wants to create a “sterile defense zone” inside Syria after seizing territory and bombing military targets in the country following the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

In recent days, Israeli ground forces crossed the border from the occupied Golan Heights into a demilitarized buffer zone inside Syria, seizing abandoned Syrian army positions.

Israel Katz said on Tuesday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the military “to establish a sterile defensive zone free of weapons and terrorist threats in southern Syria” without a permanent Israeli presence.

His comments came after Israel launched air strikes across Syria, with the Israeli military saying it hit most of the Arab country’s “strategic weapons stockpiles.”

During the past 48 hours, Israeli fighter jets carried out more than 350 air strikes, while warships struck Syrian naval bases in the ports of Al-Bayda and Latakia.

Katz said that Israel had “destroyed” the modest Syrian navy “with great success.”

Israeli strikes and incursions into Syria received international condemnation. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that “Israel is once again showing its occupation mentality.”

Geir Pedersen, United Nations envoy to SyriaHe warned that Israel risked harming the chances for a peaceful transition in the fragile state.

“We need to see a halt to Israeli attacks,” Pedersen said. “It is very important that we do not see any action from any international body that destroys the possibility of this transformation in Syria.”

Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee on Tuesday denied reports that the army had advanced toward the Syrian capital, Damascus, saying that its forces were “present inside the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border in order to protect the Israeli border.”

However, another Israeli military spokesman admitted that while most ground force operations were within the buffer zone, some forces operated “outside” the zone.

It is difficult to estimate the full extent of the Israeli incursion. An international diplomat familiar with the situation said that UN monitors sitting between Israeli and Syrian positions in the area, called the Alpha and Bravo lines, had seen the IDF continuing to transfer “men and material” since around December 7.

He added that this includes hundreds of soldiers, some armored vehicles and drilling equipment. They added that Israeli forces were stationed in or near seven abandoned Syrian military sites, and local residents, most of whom were Druze, remained in place.

The diplomat said: “This is not the size of the movement you saw in southern Lebanon, and it is not what I imagine if you were trying to advance further.”

Israel occupied most of the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War in 1967, but its claim to the land is not internationally recognized. The last time Israeli ground forces entered Syrian territory outside the Golan Heights was in the Arab-Israeli War in 1973.

For more than a decade, Israel has launched air strikes in Syria, targeting Iranian weapons sites. Tehran and the armed groups it supports, including Lebanese Hezbollah, have deployed into Syria to support the Assad regime during the country’s civil war.

Netanyahu said in a press conference on Monday evening that “controlling the Golan Heights guarantees our security; “It guarantees our sovereignty.”

He added, “The Golan Heights will be an integral part of the State of Israel forever.”

Israeli officials said on Monday that the air strikes hit targets including the remains of Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles.

A person familiar with developments in Syria said that Israel also bombed what remained of the country’s air force, including planes and helicopters that had stopped flying.

The United States, Israel’s largest ally, supported its movements in Syria, describing the operations as “urgent operations to eliminate what it believes are limited threats.”

“We certainly recognize that they live in a difficult neighborhood and that they have, as always, the right to defend themselves,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.

The campaign came as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist rebel faction that led the offensive that toppled Assad, seeks to… Consolidation of control Syria amid fears that regime change could lead to regional instability.

Muhammad al-Bashir, head of the Syrian Salvation Government, the de facto civil administration of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in the northwestern Idlib province, announced that he will head a caretaker government for all of Syria that “may” expire on March 1 of next year.

The overthrow of the Assad regime, which ruled Syria for 50 years, was the culmination of a lightning offensive by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham that swept across the country in less than two weeks.

With Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham taking control of Damascus on Sunday, Assad fled to Russia, the country that supported him in the 13-year-old Syrian civil war.

In a statement posted on the rebels’ social media channels, the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, pledged to hold accountable “the criminals, murderers, and army and security officers involved in torturing the Syrian people.”

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham issued a general amnesty for conscripts in Assad’s army, while ordering state bodies to resume public services and activity in the economically vital oil sector.

Syrian fighters and civilians also opened the Assad regime’s notorious prisons, freed prisoners, including political prisoners who had been imprisoned for decades, and discovered evidence of torture.

Additional reporting by Richard Salama in Beirut, Felicia Schwartz in Washington and Mehul Srivastava in London

Cartography by Stephen Bernard