Syrians fleeing war will not be allowed in Israel — Netanyahu

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Civilians fleeing Syria’s war will not be allowed to enter Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of Syrians have fled a government offensive in the country’s south that started on June 19 and some have set up makeshift camps near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Regarding southern Syria, we will continue to defend our borders,” Netanyahu said at the start of a Cabinet meeting, according to AFP.

“We will extend humanitarian assistance to the extent of our abilities. We will not allow entry into our territory.”

Separately, Israel’s military said on Sunday it had sent reinforcements to the Golan out of precaution.

Since 2016, Israeli forces have provided humanitarian aid to Syrian villagers and internally displaced refugees across the Golan in a bid to keep the frontier quiet. Israel says it has stepped up aid in recent days as people fleeing Syria have been arriving at a clip of hundreds a day and now number in the thousands, according to Reuters.

An Israeli occupation force officer in charge of humanitarian efforts on the Golan said on Sunday that several thousand Syrians displaced by the Daraa fighting had sought refuge in villages and tent camps set up by international relief workers on the frontier. 

“I imagine that [they] assume that they are far less likely to get shelled. I imagine that they do not see what happened to them in Daraa or in Aleppo or in the Damascus suburbs happening to them close to the Israeli border,” the officer, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

Since June 19, backed by its ally Russia, the Damascus regime has carried out a deadly bombing campaign in southern Syria as it pushes to retake the strategic area bordering Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan.

The spike in violence over the past two weeks has forced around 160,000 people to flee their homes, according to initial United Nations estimates.

These include around 20,000 to areas near the Naseeb border crossing with Jordan, a country that already hosts more than 650,000 registered Syrian refugees and says the actual figure is closer to 1.3 million.

Amman has said it cannot open its frontier to any more Syrians fleeing the seven-year conflict, but on Saturday announced it had sent aid across the border to the displaced.

Israel seized a large swathe of the Golan Heights and adjacent areas from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967. It annexed that territory in 1981, a move never recognised by the international community.