Syriaʼs de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa said he would agree to the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in a buffer zone with Israel.
He said this in a comment to Reuters.
He added that Israelʼs advance in the region was linked to the presence of Iranian forces and Hezbollah, but after the overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime, in his opinion, these forces no longer have any influence.
"Israel is now using certain pretexts to advance into Syrian regions, in particular into the buffer zone," al-Sharaa noted.
The Israeli military occupied a buffer zone in the Golan Heights in early December, arguing that the withdrawal of Syrian troops invalidated the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria. IDF also occupied the slopes of Mount Hermon on the Syrian side.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his troops would remain in the strategic Mount Hermon area on the Syrian border until “another agreement” is reached. Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz ordered troops to prepare to remain on Mount Hermon through the winter.
The Golan Heights is a region in southeastern Syria that the Israeli army occupied after the 1967 war and still controls.
The overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria
On December 8, 2024, the Syrian opposition entered the Syrian capital, Damascus, and overthrew the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who had been in power for 24 years. Assad himself fled to Moscow.
Syrian rebels are forming a transitional government — it is headed by Muhammad Bashir, who led the "Salvation Government" — a political structure created in 2017 in territories controlled by the Syrian opposition, primarily in the province of Idlib.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group and de facto leader of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa (better known as Muhammad al-Julani), has said that the country is exhausted by war and poses no threat to its neighbors or the West. He is calling for the lifting of international sanctions on Syria, as they were imposed against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which has already fallen.
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