Israel says it plans to double the amount of settlers living in the Golan Heights and invest hundreds of millions of dollars developing the area
Summary
- Israel says it plans to double the amount of settlers living in the Golan Heights and invest hundreds of millions of dollars developing the areaMEVO HAMA, Golan Heights – Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday the country intends to double the amount of settlers living in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights with a multimillion-dollar plan meant to further consolidate Israel’s hold on the territory it captured from Syria more than five decades ago.
- This is the moment of the Golan Heights,” Bennett said at a special Cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights.
- Entrenching Israeli control over the territory would complicate any future attempt to forge peace with Syria, which claims the Golan Heights.
- Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the territory, promoting settlement and agriculture there as well as creating a thriving local tourism industry.
- Some 50,000 people live in the Golan Heights — roughly half Jewish Israelis and half in Druze Arab villages that formerly were part of Syria.