Doha: Israel must immediately leave the buffer zone it has seized on the border with Syria, Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said.
“The Israeli occupation’s seizure of the buffer zone is a reckless … act, and it must immediately withdraw,” the Qatari minister was quoted as saying by the Al Jazeera broadcaster on Thursday.
At the same time, the leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmad al-Sharaa, noted after a meeting with Al Thani that Israel occupied the buffer zone on the border with Syria under the pretext of the presence of pro-Iranian formations there, but this pretext no longer relevant after the opposition came to power in Syria.
“Qatar no doubt has a big role to play … They will play an active role in continuing to exercise pressure [on Israel to withdraw] together with Western and European nations and the United States of America,” al-Sharaa was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in early December that the Israeli-Syrian agreement on the disengagement of forces in the Golan Heights, reached shortly after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, was no longer valid, since Syrian soldiers had left their positions after the collapse of President Bashar Assad’s government. Netanyahu ordered the army to occupy the demarcation zone. Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the army to prepare for wintering in the Syrian part of the Golan Heights.
