After Abu Mohammed al-Julani was named interim president of Syria, dissolved the parliment, and suspended Syria's constitution, Katz announced that Israel will remain in Syrian territory.

Mount Hermon, a huge cluster of snowcapped mountain peaks towering above the Syria-Lebanon border, overlooks the Damascus countryside as well as the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Israeli army occupied the demilitarized zone early December 2024, violating the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria, in a move that expanded Israel's control over the Golan Heights, most of which it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War.

Syria's new authority demanded, during talks with UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix on Wednesday, Israel's withdrawal from Syrian territory it occupied in the Golan Heights following the ousting of former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad in December.

Israel’s Minister of Defence Israel Katz has confirmed that the country’s defence forces or IDF will remain in Syria’s buffer zone indefinitely. On his visit to southern Syria, he said Israel will also connect with the Druze community to establish relations and continue their measure of preventing hostile forces from taking advantage of the power vacuum in Syria,