Syria leader welcomes UN forces in buffer zone with Israel
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa says his country is ready to welcome United Nations peacekeepers into the UN-established buffer zone with Israel.
“Israel’s advance in the region was due to the presence of Iranian militias and Hezbollah. After the liberation of Damascus, I believe that they have no presence at all. There are pretexts that Israel is using today to advance into the Syrian regions, into the buffer zone,” said al-Sharaa.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he ordered Israeli forces to grab a buffer zone in the Golan Heights – established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria – after a lightning advance by Syrian opposition forces ended Bashar al-Assad’s rule last month.
Qatar PM demands Israel ‘immediately withdraw’ from Syria after land grab
Qatar told Israel to “immediately withdraw” from its “buffer zone” with Syria as its prime minister visited Damascus after Israeli troops seized the area following Bashar al-Assad’s fall.
“The Israeli occupation’s seizure of the buffer zone is a reckless … act and it must immediately withdraw,” Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said at a news conference with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Sheikh Mohammed pledged to support the rehabilitation of Syria’s infrastructure, devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war.
“We will provide the necessary technical support to make the infrastructure operational again and provide support to the electricity sector,” he said, adding Qatar “extends its hand to our Syrian brothers for future partnerships”.
Israel creating ‘new reality on the ground’ in occupied Golan Heights
Sultan Barakat, a public policy professor at the Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, tells Al Jazeera that Israel’s expansion into the occupied Golan Heights after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is designed to establish a new reality.
“It’s shifting the line for negotiations and political settlement into the future,” Barakat said. “It’s creating new realities on the ground and distracting people from what the real issue is.”
Barakat said Israeli proposals for a buffer zone to be established in the occupied territory or a joint “park of peace” were disingenuous.
“All of these ideas are really designed to create a new reality on the ground,” he said, “and to grab more land and to create a negotiation position that is very different from what is legally recognised.”
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