After threatening a new war with Lebanon only yesterday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is at it again, rejecting the very idea of peace with neighboring Syria, even though there have been peace talks between the two nations since at least April.
Katz continues to present Syria as a threat to Israeli defense, even though in practice, Israel invaded Syria in December and, almost a year later, shows no signs of being willing to give any of the seized territory back.
His latest claim was novel though, and it’s that the Houthi movement, a Shi’ite faction from Yemen, is in Syria and potentially in planning to invade the Golan Heights, which Israel occupies and annexed in 1981, though that annexation has not been recognized by the international community and it is still considered Syrian territory under Israeli occupation, like the demilitarized zone they seized in December.
Map showing Houthi control within northern Yemen | Image from Wikimedia CC license
Avoiding any attack against the occupied Golan Heights was meant to be achieved through the demilitarized zone, and the UN Disengagement Force (UNDOF) that was patrolling it. That’s no longer the case, however, as Israel now occupies that territory as well and has rejected the idea of ceding it to return to the 1974 situation, even if that derailed the peace talks.
There is no real evidence to suggest that the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, have any sort of force within Syria, and the Shi’ite group would definitely be at odds with the current government is Sunni Islamist, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
There were reports of the Assad government, which was ousted in December, courting international aid during the Syrian Civil War, and that support included the Houthis, but the Houthi diplomats were expelled in 2023. Whether any meaningful amount of forces were sent was never apparent, and if they were, it is unthinkable they’d have remained under the radar for a solid year under the HTS.
The belief seems to rest on the idea that there is a Shi’ite population within Syria, and the Houthis are also Shi’ites, but that too appears to rest on a misunderstanding of the Houthis, who are Zaydi Shi’ites, a totally different variety of Shi’ites than the ones that live within Syria.
Katz suggested Israel might have to take some measures to defend the Golan Heights, including closing the border with Syria. What that would mean in practice is totally unclear, as Israel considers the “border” to be the aforementioned demilitarized zone, which they are already occupying, and Syrians aren’t permitted into Israeli territory at any rate. In this sense, the border is likely already as closed as it’s going to get.
