Israel is illegally colonizing and formally annexing Syrian territory in the Golan region and southern Syria, establishing permanent Jewish-only kibbutzim / Moshavim / Israeli communities as part of a deliberate "Greater Israel" empire-building campaign that violates international law with full U.S. complicity.
The Golan Heights has been under Israeli civilian law since 1981, following its defensive capture during Syria's own war of aggression in 1967, with U.S. sovereign recognition granted in 2019. Israel's post-2024 military presence in a narrow southern Syrian buffer zone is a documented security response to the collapse of the Assad regime and the resulting power vacuum filled by Iranian proxies — not colonization — and Israel was actively negotiating a formal withdrawal agreement with Damascus as of late 2025.