UN calls for respect to UNDOF mandate as Netanyahu calls for Syrian buffer zone

United Nations

Sphinx News: Ahmed Ali

As the United States urges Israel to adopt a non-aggression pact with its new found ally in the Middle East, Netanyahu says it will only comply if Syria agrees to a new “buffer zone.”

The Israeli Prime Minister’s comments came on Tuesday, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he wants Israel and Syria to have a, “long and prosperous relationship together.” The Prime Minister attested that this would only be possible if Syrian authorities agreed for the establishment of a demilitarised buffer zone stretching from Damascus to Jabal al-Sheikh, which Israel currently occupies.

The need for a security agreement to be facilitated now by the United States has a long-lasting and complicated historical and political context, where territorial dispute has been at the forefront of the grievances. After Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war, which has largely been deemed illegal by principal bodies within the international system, the border disputes would not end there.

After the Syrian’s and Israeli’s had fought a long-standing war of attrition beginning in the 1973 Yom Kippur War where Damascus and Cairo attempted to regain the territory it had lost in the 1967 war, an agreement of disengagement had been signed in 1974. The agreement between Israel and Syria saw the creation of a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating their militaries, creating a de facto border where UN peacekeeping forces patrolled what was called the Area of Separation.

While under the mandate of UNDOF (The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force), the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 saw Israeli authorities recall the agreement, and expanding further into Syrian territory. Israeli authorities would seize areas including the whole of Jabal al-Sheikh, a mountain that commands views over northern Israel and southern Syria.

Using the Israeli name for Jabal al-Sheikh, during a visit to wounded soldiers in central Israel, Netanyahu said, “What we expect Syria to do is, of course, to establish a demilitarised buffer zone from Damascus to the buffer area, including the approaches to Mount Hermon and the Hermon peak.”

The United Nations has since responded to the latest comments made by the Israeli Prime Minister. Spokesperson for the Secretary General, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters yesterday, “UNDOF was created to help support the 1974 Disengagement Agreement… We operate in the Golan Heights under a mandate given to us by the Security Council. We call for the respect of that mandate, and we do whatever we can to ensure that mandate is respected.”