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 “will remain at the summit of the Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh) and the security zone indefinitely to ensure the security of the communities of the Golan Heights and the north, and all the residents of Israel,” he said during a visit to Israeli forces in the area.

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,