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The Golan Heights
A basalt plateau held by Israel since 1967 and claimed by Syria
From the basalt plateau of the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee and northern Israel lie open below to the west, and the road to Damascus runs northeast across open country. That view explains why the territory matters to both sides. Israel captured most of the Golan from Syria in the 1967 war and applied Israeli law to it in 1981. Syria considers it occupied Syrian land, as does the UN Security Council, which declared the 1981 measure null and void. The United States recognized Israeli sovereignty in 2019, a position no other major power shares. Since December 2024, the dispute has spread beyond the old lines, as Israeli forces moved into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Syrian side.
The Israeli-held portion covers about 1,200 square kilometers, rising from the Yarmouk gorge in the south toward the slopes of Mount Hermon in the north. Extinct volcanic cones dot a plateau of fields, orchards, and vineyards, and the streams that drain it feed the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, a major source of Israel's water. Roughly 50,000 people live on the Israeli-held side, about half of them Druze in towns such as Majdal Shams, many of whom hold Syrian rather than Israeli citizenship, and about half Israeli settlers in Katzrin and some 30 smaller communities. East of the ceasefire line lies Syria's Quneitra governorate. A UN force, UNDOF, has monitored the separation of forces between the two countries since 1974.
Before 1967, Syrian positions on the heights overlooked Israeli farms in the valley below, and Israel's capture of the plateau that June displaced most of its Syrian residents. Syria failed to retake it in 1973, and a 1974 disengagement agreement created a demilitarized area of separation under UN monitoring. Israel's 1981 Golan Heights Law applied Israeli law there, and Washington recognized Israeli sovereignty in March 2019. After the Assad government fell in December 2024, Israel said the 1974 arrangement had collapsed, moved troops into the buffer zone and onto the summit of Mount Hermon, and has kept positions there. Syria's interim government says the Golan remains Syrian and calls for a return to the lines of December 8, 2024. US-mediated security talks between the two had produced no agreement by October 2026.