Israel says it plans to double population in Golan Heights

A colossal explosion rocked the Syrian port city of Tartus overnight, following a presumed Israeli airstrike, fueling fresh scrutiny over Israel’s actions in Syria following the Assad regime’s ouster.

Footage of the blast emerged as Israel announced plans to double its population in the occupied Golan Heights, citing threats from Syria. The move earned international condemnation and came after Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani said he has no interest in engaging in new conflicts.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitoring group, described the imagery emerging from Tartus as representing “the most violent Israeli strikes on military sites in the eastern Tartus area.”

In the video which spread across social media Monday, the massive explosion can be seen erupting across the Syrian skyline.

NBC News has been able to geolocate the footage as being filmed from Tartus port area pointing at the mountains northeast of the city, with NASA satellites detecting aftermath fires in an area just more than 9 miles from the harbor.

The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the footage. But an Israeli official who reviewed the video said the fireball was likely the result of a secondary explosion, citing the possibility of munitions igniting following an Israeli strike. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity as the person was not authorized to discuss Israel’s aerial campaign in Syria.

It comes days after satellite images appeared to show Russian forces packing up and dismantling military equipment at Russia’s Tartus naval base and Hmeimim air base, both located south of Latakia on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s actions in Syria, which came as it continues to intensively bomb the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip, were aimed at ensuring the country’s safety.

“Strengthening the Golan means strengthening the State of Israel, and this is especially important at this time,” he said in a statement Sunday after his government unanimously approved his plan to expand the Israeli population in the area.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights during the 1967 Mideast War and later annexed the roughly 460-square-mile area in 1981 in a unilateral decision that was not recognized by the international community.

In 2019, then-President Donald Trump broke with the international community and years of U.S. precedent in moving to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territory — a policy shift that was not reversed by the Biden administration.

The decision to expand the Israeli population in the Golan Heights comes after Netanyahu’s office said Thursday that the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria had “created a vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone established by the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement,” which stipulated Israel’s withdrawal from areas of Mount Hermon it occupied during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

“Israel will not permit jihadi groups to fill that vacuum and threaten Israeli communities on the Golan Heights with October 7th style attacks,” it said.

The warning was followed by the announcement that Israeli forces would remain on Mount Hermon — a key strategic peak inside a buffer zone that has existed with Syria for decades — through the winter after occupying the site.

Jolani said Saturday that Israel was using false pretexts to justify attacks on the country, according to the Reuters news agency. But, he said, his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group had no interest in engaging in new conflicts as the nation looks to rebuild following the end to the Assad reign.

With its roots in extremist Islamist movements, HTS remains a globally designated terrorist group and in 2018, the United States placed a $10 million bounty on Jolani’s head.

The former Al Qaeda fighter has projected a more moderate image and promised a Syria inclusive of the religions and ethnic groups represented in the country. The Biden administration has said it is considering removing HTS from its list of terrorist organizations.

By Monday, the plan to expand the Israeli population in the Golan Heights, as well as Israel’s airstrikes on Syria over the weekend, began to draw international backlash, with the Turkish Foreign Affairs Ministry condemning what it described as “a new stage in Israel’s goal of expanding its borders through occupation.”

“Israel’s ongoing actions seriously undermine the efforts to bring peace and stability to Syria and further increase tensions in the region,” it said in a statement Monday.

It comes after United Nations chief António Guterres last week called on Israel to halt its aerial attacks and advance into Syrian territory following Assad’s ouster, as he branded “recent and extensive violations” of Syria’s sovereignty “deeply concerning.”