Early last month, shortly after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Israel took a step that dramatically altered the strategic landscape of the entire region.
Quietly and without any prior indications, the IDF entered the buffer zone on the Golan Heights separating Israel and Syria and liberated the highest peak of Mount Hermon, raising the blue-and-white banner over the tallest mountain in either country. And while Israeli officials were quick to insist that the move was temporary, it would be a grave mistake to forgo this territory.
For both strategic and historical reasons, the Jewish state should annex all of the newly acquired parts of Mount Hermon and formally incorporate them into Israel.
While most Israelis think of the Hermon as a single summit, it is in fact a cluster of mountains, control of which was divided after the 1967 Six Day War. Seven months after the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel and Syria signed the Disengagement Agreement on May 31, 1974, which created a 235-sq.km. (146-sq.mi.) zone. The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force was tasked with patrolling the area. (Read More)
