Syria condemns Israel's plans to expand Golan settlements

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria said Monday that Israel’s plans to treble the fig of settlers surviving successful Israeli-annexed Golan Heights are “dangerous and unprecedented” and lone perpetuate its concern of the territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced connected Sunday a multimillion-dollar program meant to treble the fig of settlers surviving successful the portion that Israel captured from Syria much than 5 decades ago.

The U.S. recognized Israel’s sovereignty implicit the Golan successful 2019. The remainder of the planetary assemblage regards the territory arsenic Israeli occupied.

“Syria powerfully condemns the unsafe and unprecedented escalation from the Israeli concern forces successful the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and its persistence successful colony policies and sedate and methodological violations that emergence to the level of warfare crimes,” a Syrian Foreign Ministry connection said.

The connection said the Syrian authorities remains committed to the Syrians surviving successful the Golan “who are steadfast successful their absorption to the Israeli concern and their rejection of the determination to annex the Golan.”

Entrenching Israeli power implicit the territory would complicate immoderate aboriginal effort to forge bid with Syria.

Bennett made his announcement during a peculiar Cabinet gathering successful the Golan Heights. His bureau said the authorities would one nvest immoderate 1 cardinal shekels (over $300 million) into processing the Golan, including the constitution of 2 caller settlements.

Israel captured the Golan Heights successful the 1967 Mideast warfare and aboriginal annexed the territory. Bennett said Syria’s decade-long warfare made the thought of Israeli power of the territory much acceptable to its planetary allies, adding that the alternate would beryllium overmuch worse.

Some 50,000 radical unrecorded successful the Golan Heights — astir fractional of them Jewish Israelis and fractional successful Druze Arab villages that formerly were portion of Syria. Some of the Druze colonisation opposes Israeli control.