Rebels Give Up Positions Near Golan Heights
Syrian rebels laid down their weapons and started evacuating their positions near the Golan Heights on Friday, paving the way for President Bashar Assad’s forces to retake their positions along the Israeli frontier for the first time since 2011.
Buses carried the first batch of rebels, their family members, and assorted civilians from the southwest Quneitra province to the northwest Idlib province, where they will live among more than one million other Syrians displaced by Syria’s seven-year-long civil war.
The state-controlled al-Ikhbariya TV station reported that a second convoy of buses was preparing to depart with another batch of Quneitra fighters.
Since June 19, government forces aided by Russian air power have swept through southwestern Syria to consolidate Assad’s control over this strategic corner of the country. It puts the government back on the front-line again with Israel, and opens a sorely needed corridor for trade between Damascus and Jordan.
Rebels have surrendered villages, towns and cities in swift succession, powerless to stop the onslaught.
Last Thursday, rebels agreed to give up their positions in the Quneitra province and hand over their medium and heavy weapons. Those refusing to accept the surrender terms are being evacuated to Idlib.
The Syrian Observatory for Hu- man Rights monitoring group said it expected around 4,000 rebels will likely choose relocating to Idlib. The UN and human rights organizations have condemned the evacuations as forced displacement. Few who have left are expected to be able to return to their homes in the near-term.
Opposition activists and rescue workers are also seeking escape, distrustful of the government’s infamous security apparatus. US officials said on Thursday that the United States was finalizing plans to evacuate several hundred Syrian Civil Defence workers, also known as the White Helmets, and their families from the province through neighbouring countries. Syria and Israel fought two wars over their shared border, in 1967 and 1973, with Israel occupying the Golan Heights in the Quneitra province in the former confrontation.