Israeli military enters Golan Heights as Netanyahu warns off Syrian militants

Israel’s military entered a demilitarized buffer zone in the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights on Sunday aiming to head off any threat from the insurgency that has toppled Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated.

“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” Netanyahu said.

Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the main Syrian armed opposition group under the command of Abu Mohammad Jolani — who has family roots in the Golan Heights — overran Damascus early Sunday as Assad fled to Russia.

HTS emerged from a former al-Qaida affiliate, and while Jolani has distanced himself from the terrorist group and projects modernity, Israel remains on high alert for threats to its security emerging from the chaos in Syria.

On Saturday, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, said on a visit to the Syrian border that the IDF was “monitoring to ensure that local elements aren’t moving in our direction,” and that it had prepared a “very strong offensive and defensive response” in case of need.

Israeli media later reported that the IDF had launched airstrikes overnight on a chemical weapons depot near Damascus to prevent it from falling into the hands of rebel groups, as well as on air defense batteries and missile factories. Those reports were not officially confirmed, however.

Meanwhile, U.S. Central Command posted on X Sunday that its forces had conducted “dozens of precision airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria.” ISIS is another term for the Islamic State group.

The strikes, Central Command said, were “part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS, in order to … ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”

A senior Biden administration official added: “It is impossible not to place this week’s offens[ive] in the context of the decisions the President has made to fully back Israel against Iran and its proxy terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, and Ukraine against Russia.”

“You can really draw a line from the fateful decisions that we made and that Iran made in the days after October 7 to today,” the official said. “Hamas is on its back. Its leaders are dead. Iran is on its back. Hezbollah is on its back. Russia is on its back. It’s just abandoned its only ally in the Middle East.”

Back in Israel, Netanyahu said on Sunday that his country was ready to “send a hand of peace” to Syrians who wanted peace with Israel.

“The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus, offers great opportunity,” he observed, “but also is fraught with significant dangers.”