OCCUPIED SYRIAN GOLAN (Dispatches) – Citizens of the occupied Golan Heights on Monday renewed their condemnation of the Israeli settlement schemes in the Syrian territories, stressing their determination to foil those plans aimed at forcibly displacing its residents and destroying villages and towns.
Meidian al-Damaqsi told official news agency SANA that the Golan has been and still is an Arab and Syrian land, and that the people who have foiled the plots of the Israeli occupation over the past 54 years, will also foil any new plan that affects their identity.
Another resident, Hayel Masoud said the Zionist regime seeks to Judaize the Golan and exploit its resources, condemning the announcement to double settlers in the territory.
Syria reiterates that the occupied Golan is an integral part of its territory, and that it works to return every inch of its soil to the homeland.
It also affirms its support for the residents of the territory – mostly Syrian Druze - to resist the Israeli occupation and its plans to change the demographic features of the territory.
The Zionist regime on Sunday unveiled a plan to spend more than $300 million to double the settler population in the Golan Heights, 40 years after it occupied the Syria territory.
Extremist prime minister Naftali Bennett, who held his weekly cabinet meeting at the Mevo Hama settlement in the Golan on Sunday, vowed this was the “moment” to boost the number of settlers illegally living in the territory.
“Our goal is to double the population in the Golan,” Bennett said as he presented his one billion shekel ($317 million) program to expand settlements in the area.
Around 25,000 Zionists live in the Golan Heights, along with some 23,000 Druze, who remained on the land after it was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The occupying regime annexed the territory on December 14, 1981, in a move not recognized by the international community.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump, widely viewed as pro-Zionist, granted recognition to Israeli appropriation of the Golan in 2019.
Bennett on Sunday cited the Trump recognition and what he described as the “important” fact that President Joe Biden’s administration had “made it clear that there is no change in policy”.
Shortly after the Biden administration took office in January, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested there were legal questions surrounding Trump’s move, which Syria condemned as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.
But Blinken indicated there was no thought of reversing course, especially amid the ongoing war on Syria.
Occupied Palestine and Syria, which are still technically at war, are separated by a de facto border at the Golan Heights.