Israel minister calls for occupying Mount Hermon in Syria

Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli yesterday called for Israel to occupy the summit of Mount Hermon in Syria.

Chikli said: “The events in Syria are far from a cause for celebration. Although Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and its leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, portray themselves as a new product, ultimately most of Syria is now under the control of affiliate organisations of Al-Qaeda.”

“The good news is the growing strength of the Kurds and the expansion of their control in the northeast of the country,” the Likud Party member said, noting that “Israel must operationally renew its control at Mount Hermon [in the occupied Golan Heights] and establish a new line of defence based on the ceasefire line of 1974 [with Syria].”

Chikli’s statements come despite a call by the office Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to make statements about developments in Syria, while the Likud Party asked its members in the Knesset not to conduct interviews about Syria without the approval of Netanyahu’s office, according to reports by the Israeli public radio yesterday.

Israeli media outlets said that the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria could be bad news for Israel, noting that Tel Aviv had worked to weaken the Assad regime, but not to a large extent and not to the point of overthrowing it.

The Syrian opposition successfully entered the capital, Damascus, yesterday morning and overthrew the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, who fled to Russia.

Read: Israel army chief declares Syria a fourth ‘fighting front’