Israel ‘will not jeopardize its own security,’ Sa’ar says on Syrian border

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Jerusalem would not allow another massacre to take place “on any front,” writing on X after a visit on Thursday to Israel Defense Forces troops serving on the border with Syria.

He tweeted that “Israel is closely monitoring the situation in Syria and will not jeopardize its own security. We will not allow another Oct. 7 [attack] on any front.”

Earlier on Thursday, Sa’ar met with men from the 202nd “Viper” Paratroopers Battalion securing the frontier.

“The operations on the border are very important to prevent a threat to the communities [in the Israeli Golan Heights] and the establishment of hostile elements near the border. The reality is very dynamic, and we do not yet know how and when it will stabilize,” the minister said during the visit.

Sa’ar also visited a base of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which monitors the implementation of the Disengagement of Forces Agreement that ended the 1973 Yom Kippur War with Syria.

“I heard praise there for the cooperation with Israel in general and the IDF in particular. I also learned about their activities since the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement until today,” he said.

Sa’ar noted in his X post that U.N. peacekeepers were recently “attacked by extremist armed groups in the buffer zone in violation of the Disengagement Agreement.”

Since the fall of the Iranian- and Russian-backed Bashar Assad regime on Dec. 8, the IDF has taken up positions inside and beyond the Golan Heights buffer zone, including on the strategic Syrian side of Mount Hermon. The Israeli Air Force has conducted hundreds of strikes on Assad military assets to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile forces.