“The Golan will remain Syrian territory,” al-Sharaa declared.By World Israel News StaffSyrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa used his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday to sharply attack Israel, accusing the Jewish state of hundreds of airstrikes and more than a thousand incursions into Syria while insisting that the Golan Heights remain Syrian territory.“The Golan will remain Syrian territory,” al-Sharaa declared, invoking UN Security Council Resolution 497 and calling on other countries to reject Israel’s sovereignty over the strategic plateau.“The world is rejoicing about our return, but Israel is launching attacks against Syria,” he said.Al-Sharaa claimed that Israel has carried out 500 airstrikes, more than 1,200 incursions and 300 detentions in Syria. The figures were presented by the Syrian president and were not independently substantiated in his address.He also demanded that Israeli forces withdraw to the positions they held before December 8, 2024, the date the Assad regime collapsed and Israeli forces moved into the UN-monitored buffer zone separating the two countries.“We are committed to the 1974 agreement,” al-Sharaa said. “We call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the lines of the 8th of December 2024.”Israel has said its operations in Syria are intended to prevent hostile forces from establishing themselves near its border and to keep southern Syria demilitarized following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.Al-Sharaa accused Israel of undermining prospects for regional stability, saying Syria rejected what he called Israeli “aggressions” and attempts to impose new realities on the ground.“The opportunity for peace and security is available to those who wish to live in peace, and a just peace that maintains the rights of all,” he said.The Syrian president’s emphasis on the Golan followed comments a day earlier in which he reiterated Damascus’s claim to the territory and revealed that Syria and Israel had come close to reaching a security arrangement. Al-Sharaa said the sides had reached “almost 90%” agreement before negotiations stalled.His position puts Damascus at odds with the United States over the Golan Heights. President Donald Trump formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the territory in March 2019, signing a proclamation stating that the Golan is “part of the State of Israel.” The proclamation cited the plateau’s strategic importance to Israeli security and threats emanating from Syria.Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and extended Israeli law to the territory in 1981. Syria continues to claim the area, while most countries have not recognized Israeli sovereignty there.Al-Sharaa’s address otherwise focused heavily on portraying Syria as having reentered the international community following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. He touted the lifting of sanctions, reconstruction efforts, refugee returns and renewed diplomatic ties, declaring that while a year earlier “Syria came back,” today “Syria is rising.”But a significant portion of his foreign-policy remarks was directed at Israel, with al-Sharaa combining demands for an Israeli withdrawal with assertions that Damascus remains open to what he described as a “just peace.”The post Syrian president attacks Israel at UN, demands withdrawal from Golan Heights appeared first on World Israel News.