'Syrian-led' must not be just lip service: China Daily editorial

Soon after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government of Syria on Dec 8, Israel bombed military targets in Syria and quickly occupied the United Nations-recognized buffer zone of the Golan Heights to "protect its own security".

In a bid to avert some of the international pressure, Tel Aviv claimed its occupation of the Golan Heights will be "temporary", and it has "no intention" of intervening in Syria's internal affairs.

However, Israel seems to have changed its stance after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had what he called a "very friendly, very warm and very important" telephone call with the US president-elect on Saturday on the Middle East situation.

The day after their talk, the Israeli government approved a plan put forward by Netanyahu to expand Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, according to a statement from the prime minister's office, in defiance of regional countries accusing Israel of looting a burning house.

"In light of the war and the new front against Syria, and out of a desire to double the population of the Golan Heights, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today submitted for government approval the first amendment to the plan to encourage demographic growth in the Golan Heights and Katzrin Heights," the statement said.

Israel captured two-thirds of the strategic plateau from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing it in 1981. Its occupation is not recognized by the international community. Israel founded the Katzrin settlement for Israeli people there in 1977.

The Israeli government unanimously approved a more than 40-million shekel ($11 million) plan to encourage demographic growth in the Golan Heights.

"Strengthening the Golan Heights is strengthening the state of Israel, and it is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold on to it, make it flourish, and settle it," Netanyahu said, according to the statement.

Tel Aviv should be reminded that despite its decades-long occupation of the Golan Heights, which has seen about 31,000 Israeli people settling on the Syrian plateau as of this year, the plateau is still home to 24,000 Druze, an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam, and most of whom identify themselves as Syrian.

That US Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted during a news conference in Aqaba, Jordan, on Saturday, where he met with local leaders discussing the future of Syria, that the United States has been in "direct contact" with the Syrian rebels, who appear not to have the intention of driving Israel out of Syrian territory so far, suggests that the US is working for some deal between relevant parties at the cost of Syrian interests.

Although the top US diplomat of the outgoing Joe Biden administration said the US and its partners agreed that the power transition should be "Syrian-led and Syrian-owned", Washington's acquiescence with Israel's invasion, occupation and bold, if not shameless, attempt to annex the whole of the Golan Heights just serves to expose its hypocrisy.

This begs the question: is its ally taking advantage of the power vacuum in Syria to grab the whole of the Golan Heights part of the US' rebuilding plan for the war-torn country, or a precondition for the role the US had overtly and covertly assumed in the unexpectedly quick fall of the Moscow- and Teheran-friendly Assad government?

China is highly concerned about the volatile situation in Syria, and supports the country finding a rebuilding plan that meets the wishes of the people through inclusive dialogue. In that process, the principle of "Syrian-led and Syrian-owned" should by no means be hijacked by any external force.

The international community should earnestly safeguard Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity, respect Syria's ethnic and religious traditions, and allow the Syrian people to make independent decisions.

If the US really cares about the Syrian people as Blinken claims, it should lift the illegal unilateral sanctions it has imposed on the country for years as soon as possible, as these have only served to aggravate the grave humanitarian situation in Syria.