The Bashar Assad regime is preparing an offensive to retake southern Syria and the Syrian Golan Heights from rebel groups and has reportedly placed tanks and heavy artillery inside the demilitarized buffer zone on the country’s border with Israel.
The step violates the Agreement on Disengagement signed in 1974 between Israel and Syria, which concluded the Yom Kippur War. Israel is expected to complain to the United Nations peacemaking force known as UNDOF, the Haaretz daily reported Thursday.
The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force has patrolled the buffer zone between Syria and Israel since 1974, a year after the war ended. For nearly four decades, UNDOF helped enforce a stable truce between the two countries, but the Syrian civil war has now spilled into the area, according to the report.
Since most UN staff have been moved out of Syria due to the bloody war and are now watching at a safe distance from Israel, it is unclear if the international body can force the Assad regime to halt its military presence in the buffer zone.
The six-year conflict has seen not only some intense fighting in the buffer zone but the abduction of peacekeepers by al-Qaeda-linked anti-Syrian government militants, and other attacks that prompted several countries to withdraw their soldiers. READ MORE
