JERUSALEM/ISTANBUL
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar vowed Monday to maintain Israel’s grip on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights under any future peace agreement with Syria.
“Israel ruled over the Golan Heights more than 40 years ago, and it will remain as part of Israel under any peace agreement,” Sa’ar said at a joint press conference with his Austrian counterpart, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, in West Jerusalem.
“We have an interest in including countries such as our neighbors Syria and Lebanon into the circle of peace and normalization,” based on the Abraham Accords, he added, without elaborating.
On Sunday, US President Donald Trump said that some countries expressed interest in joining the normalization agreements between Arab countries and Israel, known as the Abraham Accord.
In 2020, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco signed US-sponsored agreements to normalize relations with Israel, in which came to be known as the Abraham Accord.
Since 1967, Israel has occupied the majority of Syria’s Golan Heights.
After the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime last year, Tel Aviv expanded its control into the Syrian buffer zone and declared the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria defunct.
Assad, who ruled Syria for nearly 25 years, fled to Russia in December, ending the Baath Party’s decades-long grip on power that began in 1963.
A new transitional administration led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa was formed in Syria in January.