Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he had ordered the army to control the buffer zone located inside Syrian territory after the withdrawal of Syrian soldiers from their positions following the armed opposition factions’ control of Damascus and the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

Netanyahu confirmed that the disengagement agreement signed with Syria in 1974 collapsed after the withdrawal of Syrian soldiers.

The Israeli Prime Minister said: “We will not allow any hostile force to impose itself on our borders.” He added, "It is a historic day in the Middle East. The Assad regime is an essential link in the Iranian axis of evil. This regime has fallen," as he put it.

He continued that these developments are “a direct result of the strikes we directed against Iran and (the group) Hezbollah, the main supporter of the Syrian regime... This has created a chain of reactions throughout the Middle East among those who want to liberate themselves from this oppressive regime and this dictatorship.” .

"Providing security in the Golan"

Israel Katz, the Israeli Defense Minister, said that a decision was taken, earlier Sunday, to deploy army forces in a buffer zone under United Nations supervision on the border with Syria, as part of a plan to ensure the protection of all Israelis residing in the Golan Heights.

He added, during a speech broadcast on television from the border with Syria after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, that Israel is determined to provide security in the Golan Heights.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad

The Syrian opposition factions announced the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad after taking control of Damascus on Sunday, forcing him to flee, ending his family’s rule of the country with an iron fist, which lasted for about 50 years, after a war that lasted more than 13 years in a seismic moment for the Middle East.

People were seen walking inside the Al-Rawda Presidential Palace, while others were leaving carrying furniture from inside, and the armed opposition factions said that thousands of people who were being held by the Syrian government in a large prison on the outskirts of Damascus had been released.

Armed opposition forces said: “We brought to the Syrian people the news of the liberation of our prisoners and the unchaining of them, and the announcement of the end of the era of injustice in Saydnaya prison.”

Sednaya is a large military prison on the outskirts of Damascus where the Syrian government was detaining thousands.