The Golan Heights

The plateau

The Golan is a hilly plateau bounded by the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee to the west, Mount Hermon to the north, the Wadi al-Ruqqad to the east and the Yarmouk River to the south. It is roughly boat-shaped, about 71 km long and 43 km across at its widest. The better farmland is in the south; the stony foothills of Hermon in the north are grazing land.^[1]

Its western crest looks down on the Hula Valley, the Sea of Galilee and the upper Jordan valley. After the First World War it became part of French-mandated Syria, and in 1941 part of independent Syria. After the war of 1948–49 Syria fortified the crest, and Israeli civilians below were killed by Syrian artillery and sniper fire.^[1]

1967 and 1981

On 9–10 June 1967, the last two days of the Six-Day War, Israeli forces stormed the heights. Most of the Syrian defenders and the Arab inhabitants fled, and the area was placed under Israeli military administration. Five mostly Druze villages remained; their people were offered Israeli citizenship, and most kept Syrian citizenship instead. By the late 1970s there were nearly 30 Jewish settlements.^[1]

In December 1981 Israel annexed the part of the Golan it held.^[1] Days later the UN Security Council unanimously declared the decision to impose Israeli law in “the occupied Syrian Golan Heights” null and void, and demanded that Israel rescind it.^[2]

“Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect”^[2]

A buffer zone and failed talks

After the war of October 1973, a disengagement agreement set up a UN buffer zone between the two armies, watched by the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), whose mandate is renewed every six months.^[1] Talks begun in Madrid in 1991 broke down in 2000 over Syria’s insistence on a full Israeli withdrawal; Turkish-mediated talks in 2008 ended when Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, resigned.^[1]

In March 2019 the United States became the first country to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, and in 2026 Colombia became the second.^[1]

After Assad

On 7 December 2024, as Bashar al-Assad’s government collapsed, the Israeli army entered the UN buffer zone. Israeli officials said the move was temporary, to stop Syria’s instability spilling over; officials in Arab countries and many observers worried that Israel was using the chaos to take land. The next week Israel’s government approved plans to expand settlements on the Golan and double the number of Israelis living there.^[1]