Israeli Military Organises Settler Tours Inside Occupied Syrian Territory
Damascus (Quds News Network)- Israel’s military is organising hiking tours for Israeli settlers inside occupied Syrian territory during the Passover holiday, Israeli media has reported. The twice-daily tours in the contested Golan Heights will run for a week beginning this Sunday.
Tickets sold out almost immediately. Settlers will cross the occupied Golan Heights in small groups in bulletproof buses into areas of Syria more recently captured following the fall of the Assad government, escorted by Israeli military forces.
Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967 and now controls hundreds more square kilometres of Syrian land.
The tours will reach up to 2.5km deep into the occupied Syrian territories, near the village of Maaraba.
They will include visits to the Wadi al-Ruqad, a tributary of the Yarmouk River and the Hejaz Railway Tunnel at the river.
These tours will be guided by the Israeli army, with participants receiving special permits.
Families will be allowed to join the tours, which will also include the Shebaa Farms, a strip of Lebanese land on the Lebanese–Syrian border occupied by Israel, at the foot of Mount Hermon.
The trips have been organised by Israel’s military 210th Division, the Golan regional council, the Keshet Yehonatan religious education centre, the environmentalist Golan Field School and the Israel nature and parks authority, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.
The tours are part of a wider initiative, “Returning to a Safer North”, after the end of last year’s Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
The Israeli military said: “It’s important for us to restore heritage and tourism to the region and to tell the story of the battles fought during the war.”
In response to questions from Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the militart claimed that the tour was “inside Israel”, rather than Syria, although the visits take place in the Golan Heights demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as Syrian territory.
After the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December, Israeli forces heavily bombed military bases across Syria.
They have also advanced beyond the Golan Heights demilitarised buffer zone, occupying Mount Hermon and other strategic areas inside Syria, in violation of a 1974 international agreement.
Initially, security officials quoted in the Israeli media talked of establishing in Syria a 15-km demilitarised zone and a 60-km “zone of influence” where potential threats could be monitored.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later demanded the “complete demilitarisation” of southern Syria.
Netanyahu said Israeli forces would remain in the Mount Hermon area and the Golan buffer zone “indefinitely” and not let the new Syrian army “enter the area south of Damascus”.
