The US State Department defended the Israeli military’s push into Syria amid questioning on whether the occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights was a violation of international law.
Spokesman Matthew Miller insisted at his Monday daily briefing in Washington that Israel’s military was undertaking an operation in self-defense to prevent militant groups from occupying regions along the border which could be used to launch offensives into its territory.
He also claimed that the occupation of five Syrian villages across the Golan Heights was temporary, and would not amount to a permanent expansion of Israeli territory. Israel itself, however, refuted that assertion directly just a few hours later, once again putting the Biden administration in the almost certain position of having spread falsehoods to the American public.
“The importance of this historic recognition has been underscored today. The Golan Heights will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever,” tweeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
Parts of the Golan Heights were annexed by Israel in 1981 after being taken in the Six-Day War and have long been recognized internationally as illegally occupied territory.
Miller, like Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, portrayed the occupation as necessary due to the abandonment of military posts in the region by regime forces aligned with Bashar Al-Assad, the ousted dictator of Syria. It still isn’t clear if the US or Israel have specific intelligence indicating that militants aligned with the Islamic State or Al Qaeda were threatening Israeli positions near the areas now under occupation.
”The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area around the negotiated Israeli-Syrian buffer zone, which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations that would threaten the State of Israel, would threaten civilians inside Israel,” said Miller, notably not giving any evidence of those groups having attempted to move in.
“Every country has the right to take action against terrorist organizations, and every country, I think, would be worried about a possible vacuum that could be filled by terrorist organizations, especially in volatile times as we obviously are in right now in Syria,” he continued.
Notably, US officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others at the White House have warned of a possible resurgence of fighters aligned with the Islamic State in Syria coinciding with the downfall of Assad. The US conducted strikes on at least 75 targets thought to be IS-affiliated over Sunday, according to a senior White House official.
Separate reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based human rights organization, indicated on Monday that Israeli forces targeted numerous military sites and potentially other targets across Syria for strikes.
The statements left open the possibility that Israel could seek to occupy the five villages — Ofaniya, Quneitra, al-Hamidiyah, Samdaniya al-Gharbiyya and al-Qahtaniyah — indefinitely, or at the very least until the establishment of a government in Syria with at least tacit support from the Israeli government. Importantly, the occupation comes just weeks before Donald Trump, a top ally of Benjamin Netanyahu known to be largely deferential to his Israeli counterpart, is set to take office.
Miller would go on to say that “this is a temporary action that they have taken in response to actions by the Syrian military to withdraw from that area” while adding that the Biden administration, which has a little more than a month left in office, would be “watching what steps [Israel] take[s] in the coming weeks”.
Marco Rubio is almost certain to take over for Antony Blinken at the State Department and is expected to face one of the cleanest Senate confirmations of any of Donald Trump’s nominees.
Rubio, like Trump, is a vocal supporter of Israel and is an opponent of the establishment of a Palestinian state, something the Biden administration and US allies in the Middle East have argued is necessary for ending the conflict in Gaza.
