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Israel's government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights
For those who don't understand, Golan Heights is a mountainous, very inhospitable to human life, area that currently has less than 8,000 families, mostly Druze - yet from military perspective it provides a strategically essential area and a buffer zone, for Israel's and Jordan's security. Living in the Golans is no picnic and, being a buffer zone, is extremely dangerous.
Most Druze have long left the area to live better lives in Israel or Lebanon when Israel took over the area after the 1967 war (one of several existential wars they fought against Soviet Union-backed Arab coalition countries) and those that remained have been safe under Israel's protection. The last time they came under attack was when Hezbollah's rocket killed 12 Druze school students playing soccer in July 2024.
Now that Syria has been taken over by IS branch, and Turkey has taken over and occupies about 18% of Syria, presenting growing threat to Kurds (and oil fields) as Erdogan pronouncing that "Allah wants Turkiye not to be confined to its borders and wants us to expand beyond" **, and severely weakened Ayatollah in Iran is trying to destabilize Jordan by forging alliances with HTS and new substate Islamist terrorists and smuggling weapons to and through Jordan, Israel needs to expand a buffer zone to protect itself and Jordan from the kind of attacks that happened on 10/7 and was planned by Hezbollah in the north, before their leadership, munitions and tunnels were destroyed by IDF.
Syria is being carved up anew, and Israel is taking security measures appropriate to new circumstances and new threats, in light of new leaderships and alliances in the region.
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|------- ... In Ankara on Wednesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkiye cannot be leashed and "escape its fate."
"We will be in a much better place in the future. Turkiye is not just a place confined in an area of 782,000 square kilometers. History has a mission designated for us and we have to act in line with this. Some people cannot grasp it. They cannot grasp what we are doing in Libya or Somalia, they are not unaware of our mission. Those unable to see the transformation of Turkiye cannot see the course of developments we went through. We won't waste time with them and will focus on our goals. I believe you will undertake your responsibility in this sacred journey."
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