Middle Eastern states condemn Israel’s invasion of Syria

The IDF’s advance past the Golan Heights is a “flagrant violation of international law,” Qatar’s Foreign Ministry has said

Israel’s military incursion into Syria has been condemned by neighbors Egypt, Jordan and Qatar, who have accused the Jewish state of exploiting the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to seize land, in violation of international law.

Israel moved troops into a demilitarized buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights on Sunday, after opposition forces seized Damascus and Assad fled to Russia. In a video statement from the region, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s 1974 agreement with Syria to establish the demilitarized strip had effectively “collapsed” once Syrian troops “abandoned their positions.”

Israeli troops and tanks moved beyond the buffer zone on Monday, entering Syria proper in an operation that Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said is intended to create a new “security area” that would be clear of “heavy strategic weapons and terrorist infrastructure.”

The move was criticized across the Arab world. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry called it “a dangerous development and a blatant attack on Syria’s sovereignty and unity, as well as a flagrant violation of international law.”

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi issued a similarly worded condemnation, as did the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, which declared that Israel had “exploited the…vacuum in Syria in order to occupy more Syrian land and to impose a new reality on the ground in contravention of international law.”

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Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed the area in 1981. However, under the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, Israel and Syria accepted the deployment of UN peacekeepers to the buffer zone, which until Sunday separated Israeli troops in the occupied Golan Heights from their Syrian counterparts.

As Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel pushed beyond the buffer zone for the first time in 50 years, Israeli warplanes struck targets further inside Syria. Among the sites hit were Mezzeh Air Base in Damascus and Khalkhala Air Base, 50km south of the capital, as well as the southern cities of Dara’a and Suweidah.

Katz said on Monday that he had directed the IDF to conduct strikes “throughout Syria” to destroy Syrian Army arms and infrastructure. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said that these strikes targeted “strategic weapons systems, like, for example, remaining chemical weapons, or long-range missiles and rockets, in order that they will not fall in the hands of extremists.”